I think as you get older, you realize there's always going to be critics. Critics are going to win every time because they can change their critique based on the stats and their own personal feelings. It's less about proving people wrong, the critics wrong, and it's more about challenging myself to keep this level up.
As you get older, and this is a young man's game, and people say, 'Well, there's no way I can keep up running the way I'm running; there's no way my arm is going to stay as strong as it is.' It's the challenge of trying to stay in my tip-top shape year in and year out so I can keep playing the way I want to play.
I know my role on this team, and I'm expected to prepare and to perform every week and play well. I relish that opportunity - to be somebody the guys can count on week in and week out, to play really well. That's what really motivates me: to make my coaches proud, my teammates proud, and the fans proud.
In general, when you have success on the field, you're more popular, and you have that fame that comes with it. You realize you're in the public eye more, and you've got to be a little bit more careful about some of the things you're doing out in public and make sure you're smart about the things you say.
When you're throwing the football the way you want to, you're not thinking about it. You're not thinking about your drop or your release point or the trajectory or where your feet are. It's just coming off your hand exactly the way you want it to, fluid and confident.
When you really start figuring things out as a quarterback, you realize you don't have to be perfect every time, but you do have to be quick and decisive.
Playing the quarterback position, there are so many things you need to master that improvement ends up taking place on graduated levels.
I'm at a point where there isn't any wasted movement in the throwing motion. Everything is consistent and smooth. When I first got into the league, I held the ball really high. That was the standard in college, and it messed up my timing a little bit - the draw, bringing it back, then the release.
The beauty of our country is that when it was founded that they took some time to lay out civil liberties in the first 10 Amendments - the Bill of Rights. I'm a firm believer in those civil liberties and the ability to have your own opinion.
The thing I love about Wisconsin is the people. We have such incredible people here. It's fun to recognize the incredible athletes and coaches and sponsors and people we have here tonight. But we also have incredible fans.
I wanted to really ingrain myself in the culture and the people. And I apologize about having an allergy to dairy products that gives me some irritable bowels, but other than that, I mean, I've embraced just about everything else Wisconsin - especially when it comes to sports, but also the people and the interactions with our fans.
You always have to be on at times, and occasionally people get upset if you say no to a picture when you're eating dinner or something, and that's kind of the hard part. Or if you get crazy rumors that swirl around you from time to time that are just silly.
When it comes to setting the market values, I let that stuff take care of itself. I know my value in this league, and I know the team appreciates me. I'm going to continue to make myself an indispensable part of this roster. When you do that, when your time comes up to get a contract, you usually get a contract extension.
As you get older, the summer is less of a vacation and more of a training period by yourself away from the team. It's exciting for me. I felt like I've been really getting better as far as my conditioning every single season as I get older.
This is what we get paid to do, is to bring it every week, and I hope the guys would say I bring it every week. I mean, I love this game, and I bring energy.
I think it is all about finding ways to challenge yourself.
When you're competitive, the last thing you want to do is come out of a game, regardless of what kind of injury it is - whether it's an ankle, a knee, a rib, or a head injury.
You play it the way you always play it. You look for matchups, and you go through your progression, and you throw it to the guy who's most open.
I like to push the limit to how much air we can put in the football, even go over what they allow you to do and see if the officials take air out of it.
We got to think of other ways to help these kids out because there's a lot of kids who get hurt in college and then don't make it to the NFL and don't have insurance, and their entire lives are changed when they put their bodies on the line for their school.
