Former ESPN reporter Katie Nolan recently told a pretty embarrassing story about running into Tom Brady at the worst possible moment. Back in 2017, she was at the New England Patriots building to talk with Julian Edelman, one of Brady’s teammates at the time.
According to Daily Mail, Nolan needed to change her shirt before the interview started. She kept going back and forth to the bathroom down a long hallway, but eventually thought nobody was around and figured she could just swap her top quickly in the hallway. That turned out to be a big mistake because the new shirt she tried to put on had all its buttons done up, and she did not notice this until it was too late.
As she pulled off her old shirt and tried to get the new one over her head, she got completely stuck. While she was trying to undo the buttons near the top so her head could fit through, she heard a door open nearby and the sound of cleats walking across the floor. She finally pushed her head through a gap between two buttons and saw Tom Brady walking right past her while she was stuck halfway in her shirt and wearing just her bra.
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This whole thing was extra painful for her
Making everything worse was the fact that Nolan is actually a huge Patriots fan herself. One of her work friends at ESPN, Megan Kelly, backed up the whole story later and said Nolan was not making any of it up or adding extra details. You can still find the interview she did with Edelman on YouTube, and she is wearing that same button-up shirt that got her stuck.
She was there that day to film a preview segment for the Patriots playoff game coming up against the Houston Texans. New England ended up beating them pretty easily, 34-16, and kept rolling through the playoffs. They made it all the way to the Super Bowl that year and pulled off one of the craziest comebacks anyone has ever seen in football. They were losing to the Atlanta Falcons 28-3 and somehow came back to win 34-28 in overtime.
That championship was number five for Brady, but he was not done yet. He won another one with New England two years later in 2019, then left to play for Tampa Bay. He took the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win in 2021, giving him seven total championships before he finally retired.
Nolan moved on from ESPN in 2021 after working there for four years. She started hosting a show on Sirius XM’s Mad Dog radio this past September, right when the new football season was kicking off. Even though that moment with Brady was super awkward at the time, she can talk about it now and see the funny side of it.
Sports reporters deal with plenty of unexpected moments during NFL interviews, but getting caught changing clothes by one of the greatest players ever is definitely up there with the most memorable mishaps in sports broadcasting.
Published: Nov 23, 2025 03:20 pm