Teams are always hitting me in the gut, trying to grab me when I jump and stuff like that. But I expect it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you let those defensive backs know that you're a physical player, they don't really want to tackle. That's it. That's why you see me get a hurdle every game. Those guys don't want to tackle me when I get to the second level.
That's what makes it so fun to be on a team. You're sitting at your house, thinking up this wild, crazy stuff as to how it's going to go, and the other guys are sitting at their houses doing the same thing.
You've got to be careful of guys trying to chop-block you. You know, running backs, the receivers. You've got to just hope that your knees are fine and you can avoid those chop blocks.
I really do try hard to be a good teammate. I can't run very fast, but I try to always run hard. I may strike out a lot, but I try to walk to set up the guys who are hitting after me.
No matter what you do in the offseason, you can't simulate putting spikes on and standing in the grass and being around your teammates. When you're around your teammates, you step it up a notch. It's just kind of instinctive you do that.
There used to be an old thing where every team had a heavy bag in their locker room for people to punch, but again, it was more about conditioning because if you hit a heavy bag for a minute, it feels like your arms are about to fall off.
I don't want to be jumping from team to team.
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.
The one thing I do that nobody else does is jump three and four times for one rebound.
This is a physical game, and that's how you have to play. When you do that, the defense eventually gets tired of tackling you.
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