Patriots David Andrews shows Tennessee Titans some respect
New England Patriots center, David Andrews, showed the Tennessee Titans some respect before the teams’ joint practices start on Wednesday.
It has been a long offseason of disrespect for the Tennessee Titans, but at least New England Patriots center, David Andrews, knows what’s good.
As the Patriots and Titans begin two days of joint practices on Wednesday and Thursday before a preseason matchup on Saturday, Andrews heaped praise on the Titans’ roster, which is led by a supremely talented defense.
Andrews sees the kind of players the Titans have, according to Nick Goss of NBC Sports.
“It’s just a great opportunity to go compete,” Andrews explained. “It’s going to be a tough week down there. They’re going to be ready to go. They’ve got a good football team. They’re tough, they’re physical, they’re very disciplined, so it’s going to be a big challenge for us. Two days to go compete and then go and play in the game.”
Andrews went on to point out that the Titans have a lot of great players that will present a challenge for he and his Patriots teammates. He also mentioned how there are few weaknesses on this Tennessee roster.
“They do a lot of things to challenge you,” Andrews said. “First, they have a lot of great players. That’s pretty obvious. One, they play very sound and they play tough and physical, like I said. Not a lot of weaknesses and you have to be at your best or else they’ll exploit that.”
As far as challenges go: ditto for the Titans.
The Titans get a chance to practice, and then play against, the defending Super Bowl champions. You never want to make joint practices or a preseason game out to be a major measuring stick, but going up against the Patriots in any way is as close as you can get.
In the pair’s meeting during Week 10 of last season, the Titans reigned supreme with a 34-10 victory over the Pats.
While Tennessee would go on to eventually miss the playoffs with a do-or-die Week 17 loss to the Indianapolis Colts without starting quarterback, Marcus Mariota, the Patriots would become the Super Bowl champions with a victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII.
Even with all that success, don’t think the Patriots have forgotten about that loss. It is still fresh in their minds, as well as the comments made shortly thereafter by former Patriots back, now-Tennessee Titans running back, Dion Lewis.
There’s definitely mutual respect between these two squads, but there could be some lingering bad blood after Lewis basically called the Patriots soft after the 2018 win.
As much as humanly possible, that angle adds a bit of juice to these two teams meeting again in a pair of joint practices, and later, a preseason game.