You have to play with the mentality that you are about to lose your job, and that they're going to talk about 'The Other Guy' first. You have to think, 'I want my name mentioned first.'
You can lose a game but, I see guys every week including myself, you lose a game, it's a tough loss, you're down, two weeks later you forgot about it. You know it's amazing how down you were, but all of the sudden you're like it never happened.
Well I would say that we're regular people first of all and we're normal and it's obvious by some of the things that have happened just because our name is famous we're not immune to tragedy.
Well even before she was diagnosed with the cancer, I would have said that she was a lot tougher than me and most guys would probably say that about their wives and it's probably true in most cases.
Well family is obviously the most important. There was a time when I thought football was the most important.
The town, the team, it's a family. That has helped. For some people who have had to deal with some of the problems I have had to deal with don't have football as an out.
So much of a professional athlete's success depends upon not necessarily the play itself but how he deals with... always saying how you deal with good, is just as important as how you deal with bad.
Because after my first year I had a lot of success, took everybody by storm, came back the next year thought it was easy and didn't have near the season I had the previous year. It was kind of a wake-up call. And so, life goes on.
As a coach, they would love to sit there and say, 'It's going to be five steps, you're going to hitch up into a perfect pocket, you're going to look at number one - no; you're going to go to number two - no.' It doesn't work that way.
I don't really care what's going on I just care about getting my job done the best that I can possibly do and deal with the other things in my life that take a lot of time and a lot of thought.
In my situation, unlike some players who retire because they have no choice - either teams don't want them or injuries have caused them to retire, and they just can't do it - for me, I really had never thought I would give out mentally before I gave out physically, but I think that was the case.
In the NFL a lot of times everyone gets caught up in the business side of things. For them it's all about money and it really leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
It's a difficult job to do, but that is why we do it. Only so many people can do it. But it, it enables you to... for a brief period of time to kind of get away. You have to go back and deal with, but it's a good escape.
It's not so much about killing an animal, it's being at peace and you don't have to worry about all the other things that go on. That's a couple of hours a week that you get to escape but it's nice to do that.