It's not all about talent. It's about dependability, consistency, and being able to improve. If you work hard and you're coachable, and you understand what you need to do, you can improve.
What we can control is our performance and our execution, and that's what we're going to focus on.
If there is something that's your passion when you're young, do it. Let everything else take care of itself.
There's no medals for trying. This isn't like eighth grade where everybody gets a trophy. We are in a professional sport, and it is competitive to win. That's what we do.
You have to go with the person who you have the most confidence in, the most consistent. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but I'm going down with that person.
A lot of performance is based on confidence, knowing what you're doing, and being familiar, and not thinking too much and trying to play at confident game speed.
I grew up watching my dad scout games live. They played on Saturday. Sometimes they wouldn't get the films until Monday. Sunday air shipping from wherever the college team was located - Starkville, Mississippi, or wherever the film was coming from. It took two days.
Game management, game decisions, adjustments, seeing things during games - it's all important.
I think that's part of building your team is trying to anticipate where your team is going and to a certain extent where, especially defensively because you have to react to what they put on the field. Defensively you have to be able to defend those things.
You go to the draft board and think, 'Here's a nose tackle. Who needs a nose tackle?' Well, eight teams in front of you need a nose tackle, and there's two nose tackles. It's something you have to figure out where you can get the players to play in your system.
The more you and the organization can help take care of personal situations, the smoother the ship runs on the football end.
I think it's important for us, as a team, to know each other. Know our teammates and our coaches. To interact with them is more important than to be 'liked' by whoever on Chatrun.