Tennessee Titans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair was introduced to the media on Monday and his press conference produced a few funny moments.
First, Al-Shaair jokingly roasted beat writer Paul Kuharsky after he asked the linebacker about his playing weight. But Al-Shaair also told a funny story about how he got into football in the first place.
It turns out he didn’t want to play, but his grandfather signed him up anyway. But grandpa didn’t make it easy on little Azeez, as he pumped his grandson up to the coach, leading to disastrous results.
“I remember when I first started playing football, I was crying like a little baby because my grandfather signed me up,” Al-Shaair explained. “(He) lied to the coach, told him I was super fast, had hands like Jerry Rice and I went out there the first day, (the coach) put me with the oldest group of kids because of what (my grandfather) said and I remember we did the Oklahoma drill and I got rocked.”
But from that situation came a quote that remains Al-Shaair’s favorite:
“That which is for you shall not pass you by and that which passes you by is not for you,” he recited.
“And I remember I literally went home and I cried to my mother and I just told her, ‘what if football didn’t work out for me, what was I going to do?’
“And I remember she just told me, ‘all you can do is work as hard as you can, trust in God and everything will take care of itself. And that’s when she told me that quote.”
