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Titans safety Kenny Vaccaro will see his old team, the Saints, on Sunday. But the Saints are often on Vaccaro’s mind, and he gives his current teammates pointers that he picked up from playing in New Orleans.

Specifically, Vaccaro regularly tells Titans rookie wide receiver A.J. Brown that if he wants to be as good as Saints receiver Michael Thomas, he needs to work as hard as Thomas. Vaccaro regales Brown with stories about how hard Thomas worked in practice, starting with his rookie year in New Orleans, and says that’s why Thomas is now the best receiver in the NFL.

“Kenny always reminds me,” Brown said. “He’s like, ‘Michael Thomas is working right now. He’s working.’ So, in between periods, he’s telling me ‘Go do something.’ He was telling me that Michael Thomas came in his rookie year demanding the ball, this and that. He tells me just keep working at it and just keep building that confidence in yourself.”

Vaccaro said Thomas immediately earned the respect of Saints quarterback Drew Brees, and the two now have a rapport that makes them incredibly hard to prepare to beat. Vaccaro said he tells Brown thats the path to being the best.

“He’s going to catch everything,” Vaccaro said of Thomas. “50-50 balls, Drew puts it up there for him. I think he trusts him that he’s gonna make the play. It’s his mentality. I’ve never met somebody as determined as Mike Thomas. . . . Mike wants to be the best player that’s ever put on the shoes. You don’t see the behind the team stuff. You see the incredible catches, the flexes, but I knew Day One, the way he practiced, the way he walked around, he wanted to be that. I told A.J. Brown, I saw that Michael Thomas’s rookie year. Every day catching balls, working on timing with Drew, every single day, an hour after practice.”

All those highlights we see come as a result of the hard work that only his teammates see.