Antonio Freeman on How Far Son Alex & USMNT Can Go in the World Cup

Antonio Freeman scored an 81-yard touchdown in a Super Bowl and once caught a ball off the back of a defender's legs for one of the wildest plays in Monday Night Football history. None of it, he says, compares to watching his son do it on the world's biggest stage.

The Packers legend joined the show to talk about Alex Freeman, the youngest player on a US men's national team that is already doing things that have never been done in the program's history. And while the proud-dad nerves are real, the football lifer offered something more valuable: a read on this group from the inside.

Freeman has been around the team at its hotel, stopped by practice and shot a piece with a network, and what he described sounded familiar to him. "What I see is magic," he said. He compared the feeling walking into the team hotel to the camaraderie of the Packers locker rooms that made Super Bowl runs. "They all like each other, they all get along, and they all just want to win, and they want to win for this country."

That, Freeman believes, is the whole thing. He pointed to the reaction around his son's goal as proof of a team without egos. "Nobody really cares about individual stats and individual accomplishments," he said. "This is the best team in the US they've put together." The camaraderie, he added, glows whether the players realize it or not, on the field and off it.

Asked to prognosticate how far this team can go, Freeman did not hedge on the belief, only on the certainty. He sees a group right on the cusp of doing something great and turning the country's attention back toward US soccer. His hope is simply that they keep the energy. "Keep that energy, play hard, play physical and believe in themselves," he said.

The nerves never really go away. Freeman admitted he still gets what he called bubble guts watching Alex, the same way he did as a player, except now he can at least take a bathroom break instead of sitting on the sideline waiting for the next series. The difference is the helplessness. He knows how much work his son put into his craft, and he knows what Alex wants most is to keep proving himself and eventually separate the name Alex Freeman from being known only as Antonio Freeman's son.

The conversation closed on the lighter note that only a father who played a different kind of football could land. The host could not resist wondering aloud how good Alex might be in a sport where he was allowed to run past people the way his dad did. Freeman laughed and shared the moment his son made the call. "After that first hit in football, I was like, man, forget this," Alex told him.

So the kid chose soccer, and his father chose to get fully behind him. "Go USA," Freeman signed off, "and go Pack go."