Tristan Wirfs not having Tom Brady’s number…

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Something bugged me about the claim from Buccaneers starting tackle Tristan Wirfs that he didn’t have Tom Brady’s phone number, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

It finally hit me yesterday. The notion that Wirfs didn’t have Brady’s number during 2020 — a season in which he started every game — doesn’t mesh with one of the claims made about Brady’s habits in advance of Super Bowl LV.

Receiver Mike Evans said in the days after the victory over the Chiefs that Brady was regularly texting messages of encouragement to his teammates in the days before the game.

Evans said that, every night at 11:00 p.m. ET, Brady texted, “We will win.” And there was more.

“He was texting us a lot of clips, lots and lots of film on what to expect on certain down and distances,” Evans said. “And he does that all the time, but just in the playoffs and especially this game, he went above and beyond.

“Like 12 at night, six in the morning. People aren’t even up, and he’s telling us this won’t work against this guy. You’ve got to run it like this. This is the detail that went into this and the extra meetings and all the hard work. It all paid off and Tom is a great leader.”

Maybe Brady wasn’t sending those messages of encouragement to all of his teammates. But it’s odd to think that one of the five men charged with critical obligation of keeping the Kansas City pass rush from getting to him would have been omitted. The only way to harmonize the comments of Evans from February 2021 and Wirfs from earlier this week is that Wirfs, and maybe others, weren’t getting the benefit of the great leadership that was later attributed to Brady.

Or that, if Wirfs was, it was coming from an unknown number.