Super Bowl 55 teaches Tennessee Titans a huge lesson
By Will Lomas
The Tom Brady argument
No matter what, please don’t be one of those people that says “See, the Titans should have signed Tom Brady this offseason!”.
Not only would Brady have been a poor fit for what the Titans wanted to do, but he is a poor fit for what the Titans have on the roster.
The linemen, receivers, and Derrick Henry are all extremely comfortable with running a zone-blocking scheme that threatens every level of the defense. Part of that means that your quarterback has to be able to run bootlegs and he has to be willing to tuck it and run when the defense gives you free yardage.
That is NOT what would have happened if Tom Brady was the quarterback.
In Tampa, he inherited a team and an offense that had used more traditional drop-back passes and less deception. That included offensive linemen, receivers, everything.
The Bucs also had great injury luck and got 16 games out of Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Mike Evans, Scotty Miller, Cameron Brate, Tristan Wirfs, and Ryan Jensen. That is basically every above-average player on the Bucs offense coming into the season with the exception of Ali Marpet and Chris Godwin.
For a comparison, here are the Titans offensive players who played all 16 games last year: Ryan Tannehill, Ben Jones, Dennis Kelly, Derrick Henry, and Nate Davis.
Even with the great scheme fit and incredible injury luck, Tom Brady’s Bucs only scored 1 more point this season than the Titans. That can quickly be attributed to the abysmal special teams where Gostkowski missed 8 field goals and 2 extra points.
The offense was never the problem with the Titans last year so don’t make a fool of yourself and say that Brady would have taken Tennessee to the Super Bowl. Unless he was going to bring that Bucs defense with him, then this team was headed in the same direction (or maybe worse).