You become a family when you're on a football team. It's the ultimate team sport, so you have no choice but to feel like family, and that never leaves you.
You kind of have to be secretive about what you're doing post-football because if you're really outward and everyone knows about it while you're playing football then the rap on you is, 'Oh, you don't care about the game.'
In high school, my dream was to go to the NBA. But when recruiting came around, the letters for football compared to basketball were like 25 to one, and my one wasn't from Duke.
In high school, you can just go out there and play. In the NFL it was so much more mental.
To look back where I started from, you can't help but be amazed.
I don't learn as well, I think, in like a structured way. I kind of have to be thrown into it.
Everything in life is about confidence. The more you have, the further you'll go usually.
I've been blessed. I've had a fortunate, successful career in the NFL. It's been longer than I initially expected when I came into the NFL.
I'm a class clown.
Something clicked, and I was like, 'I gotta be prepared. This could end at any time.' That was my second year in the league. From that point on I started doing broadcasting and things like that in an attempt to find my passion - something I could do after football.
Months after I retired, the Kings won the Stanley Cup and I was there for that game... I happened to be there with a buddy of mine and I was like, 'Oh, I miss this.'
The leadership qualities that you have to have to be a producer on a film is something I learned being a captain on the team.
For all of the achievements and awards, to be able to retire as a Raider ranks highest among all of those.
I'm always willing to help out when people have stories and they bring them to me. I also like the completely fun films like 'Patti Cake$.' My taste is, if it feels like it's something I'd like to see, then I'll get behind it.
I don't talk smack because I feel like it's a waste of energy.
You walk into a room and there's already judgment. You know, like football players can't act or you're going to come in and be stiff.
I was never a big spender.
I talked to a lot of people that switched careers. Not necessarily to acting, but switched jobs. The 'becoming a student again' is the thing that always kept coming up.
The beauty of football is you have to perform through ups and downs in a public form with a team and the discipline and the pushing through it and the preparation that it takes to be great - all of those things have served me well.
I hate the term black sheep, but I just felt like I wasn't keeping up. It was a subtle pressure I put on myself.
