But no one is ever immune to the playful jabs forever, and Tilis wasn't finished being on the receiving end.
At one point in the buildup, Morgan reached for the nearest beverage before drawing a sharp rebuke from the guy he calls "my wingman."
"That's mine," Tilis scolded. "It's got my name right on it."
Since the league doesn't want anyone showing up on TV eating or drinking something from a competing brand from an advertising partner (and those partners are important; they pay for this stuff we all enjoy consuming), there are blank mugs for everyone to drink from. Tilis' wife had applied decals with his name to three of them, one for water, one for his preferred energy drink, and one with a question mark so he was covered for any eventuality.
"The league will call in, and they'll say, hey, pull the (non-sponsored) can off the desk, so we get these cups every year, and I know how it happens," Tilis said after the fact. "You end up with a million different cups, and they're wasted. So I asked my wife, I said, hey, can you make me the labels for my cups so that I know which cups are mine?
"He (Morgan) was just grabbing it, and I was like, no, that's my cup. I actually wouldn't have cared, except it had my name on it. So I was like, you don't want to be drinking out of a cup with my name on it."
A reasonable response.
"Geez, relax," Morgan replied when Tilis snatched his cups back, but then leaned the other direction and admitted, "I would have totally drank out of that."
These two, in case you haven't noticed, have a vibe that borders on Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly at times. The former linebacker and the numbers guy/negotiator met for the first time on a Zoom call in January 2024, and quickly developed a rapport based on shared goals as well as a sense of humor that creeps in when you least expect it.
Morgan obviously admires Tilis's acumen with numbers. "I'll be over here counting on my fingers," the GM joked, describing his partner's ability to analyze trade offers in an instant.
"He makes my job easy because when we're going through the trade stuff, he can get stuff out so quick," the GM said. "You only have like 10 minutes or whatever, but like with Brandt, if you have 40 seconds, he can whip something up really quickly, or he can get trade offers and just be like, 'That's not good enough, no,' right away.
"I could tell right away. Usually, it's a good thing when you're like opposites; our personalities are opposite, like just our backgrounds are opposite so that it works to our advantage. My strengths aren't necessarily earn his strengths and vice versa. So I think we just really balance each other really well."
But not so well that they're going to drink out of the same cup or anything, at least if Tilis has anything to do with it.
"I'll drink out of your cup; who cares?" Morgan said with a laugh.
We think he's joking.