Lewan: 'I Needed This'
NASHVILLE – Taylor Lewan called it a step in the right direction.
The Tennessee Titans left tackle was optimistic that he turned around a terrible start to the 2021 NFL season when he played from start to finish in his team’s 25-16 victory over the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday at Nissan Stadium.
The 30-year-old had a relatively uneventful day as part of an offensive line that helped Derrick Henry rush for 113 yards on 28 carries, allowed quarterback Ryan Tannehill to be sacked once and helped the offense hold the ball for more than 34 of the contest’s 60 minutes.
That, in its own right, was eventful. After all, Lewan looked overmatched at times in a Week 1 loss to Arizona and did not make it out of pre-game warmups in Week 2 at Seattle due to an issue with his right knee that prompted the club’s medical staff to scratch him.
“I felt like my old self mentally,” Lewan said after the game. “I was moving a lot better. My pad level was a whole lot better. I was definitely more explosive and stronger.
“… I needed this more, I think, than the team needed this. I needed (Sunday). I needed to see that I could go do it, be left on an island again and be able to block and go do those things, run left and be able to sustain a block and get movement. (Sunday) was a great day.”
The Arizona game was his first (outside of a brief preseason appearance) since Oct. 18, 2020 when he sustained a torn knee ligament that ended his season after just five games. It was, by his account, the first serious injury of his life and the subsequent reconstructive surgery was – by far – the most significant medical procedure he had experienced. From there, he embarked on the long road to recovery.
Throughout the offseason, Lewan talked often about how he seized the opportunity to not just work on his knee but on his entire body. He asserted that he was in peak physical condition, a claim he admitted Sunday was an attempt to try to speak something into reality.
“(Sunday) was the first day, like man, I feel like myself again,” he said. “… When I got into trouble in Week 1, when I watched the film, I was doing a lot of things that were very uncharacteristic of myself.
“… It’s been a really, really hard journey. A lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”
To make matters worse, he took a mental beating when fans at Nissan Stadium booed him in Week 1 as he returned to action after having missed a couple second-half series to deal with cramps.
“I’m coming back from the ACL, 10 months, a physical process and – yeah – I wasn’t playing well,” Lewan said. “That was a really hard game to get over emotionally, mentally. … I really wish I could articulate just how difficult that was. It was hard to hear the fans after seven or eight years, with as much as I’ve tried to do for the city, boo when I came back out there.
“… I was like, ‘Damn, that’s crazy how fast they turn.”
Then whatever doubts he carried with him into Week 2 were compounded when he could not make it through the warmup. He said that he hyperextended his knee, the same one on which he had surgery, and heard a pop.
Doctors pulled him from the lineup because they did not have enough information about what happened, he said. When preparations began for the game with Indianapolis, he had been cleared and made it through the practice week without incident.
Lewan is not ready to say that he is back to the form that earned him three straight Pro Bowl invitations from 2016-18. But he did not feel any pain in his knee against the Colts, and he did feel the love from the fans who watched the Titans win a home game against their chief division rival for the first time since 2017.
“It’s going to be a cool process because I’m just going to get better every single week,” Lewan said. “Not only mentally, but physically I’m going to get better too.”
It’s not as if things could have gotten much worse.
