Titans left tackle Taylor Lewan says that Tom Brady’s pedestrian golf skills temper the sting of not signing “the best football player of all time.”
“As far as Tom Brady coming, Tom Brady is the best football player of all time there’s no argument there,” Lewan told Michael Giardi of NFL Network recently. “He’s a really bad golfer which makes us all feel a lot better about ourselves.”
Brady, 42, was frequently linked to the Titans — who quelled the Patriots’ playoff bid in the AFC wild-card round — this offseason with quarterback Ryan Tannehill’s future up-in-the-air.
“You watch the headlines, you become a fan. You’re looking, ‘OK, is he coming? Is he not? What’s going on?'” Lewan said of Brady, who ultimately signed a two-year, $50 million deal with the Buccaneers.
The speculative connection was due in part to Brady’s relationship with Titans head coach and former Patriots linebacker, Mike Vrabel. Brady and Vrabel were teammates from 2001-2008 and were members of three Super Bowl-winning teams together. The two have remained close since Vrabel left New England and FaceTime each other like “girlfriends on a weekend.”
“Him and Vrabel are friends, and I think Vrabel wants him to be a little bit more friends than they actually are, and I don’t know the whole gig,” Lewan said.
The three-time Pro Bowl offensive lineman was suspended for the first four games of the 2019 season after violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing substances. Lewan, 28, was integral in the Titans’ playoff run, which ended in the AFC Championship against the Chiefs after upsetting the Patriots and Ravens.
The Titans were the first of Brady’s publicized suitors to drop out of the sweepstakes, and gave Tannehill a four-year, $118 million extension before the start of free agency. Lewan was quick to praise the 31-year-old signal-caller, who was named the NFL Comeback Player of the Year in February.
“At the end of the day, I’m happy we stuck with Ryan [Tannehill],” Lewan added. “I’m happy that Ryan is on the team because I think he’s the right guy for the job to get us to the next step.”