It's one thing to be 100 percent and go out and play football feeling great. It's another thing when you're not feeling good. You're sick, or you got a nagging injury, and you gotta go out in the cold and go across the middle where a guy's coming full speed at you trying to kill you.

When I was growing up, I was a huge San Francisco 49ers fan. The New England Patriots have a similar mold and plan to win a lot of games - reminiscent to that Bill Walsh era.

I don't even enjoy football, at least professional football, anymore because I'm breaking the game down constantly. You're sitting there watching the plays, and you're talking mental reps on what would I have done here against this coverage or this leverage, this, that. It is what it is.

I don't say I'm necessarily a professional football player. I'm a competitor. That's what was instilled in me as a young boy.

I constantly worry about my family and my kids. 'Are they O.K., what are they doing right now?'

I savour the adulation and love I have been getting from my fans and the blessings of elders in my family. Fourteen years have given me a lot and I can't thank God and the industry enough.

For me, family has always been more important than football. The most important thing for me is that my parents and my brother are fine. That is the first thing on my mind when I wake up every day.

They were often the first students in their family to go to college and the very idea of higher education was still foreign to them. They had to make a conscious and often difficult decision to come to college.