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Football sometimes is stressful. Music is more of a kind of laid-back type, chilled-out kind of activity. It kind of keeps me balanced, I guess.

Football is a passionate game. It excites us.

A college football star, by his senior year, is used to running out there with 110,000 people going nuts. They feel comfortable in that environment. To me, a set feels like that. The one thing that I do know is that, as long as I'm prepared, I know this environment and this world.

If I want to calm down, I'll buy some fabric, get a pattern, shut myself in a room and stay there for days, really happy. And at the end of it, you get a bedspread or some curtains or something to wear - it's lovely.

To me, football is so much about mental toughness, it's digging deep, it's doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms.

The best thing about football for me is the reacting. It's a lot of instincts. But training, for me, it's more for the meditating. And I spend more time training than actually playing football. So I get into that zone during training more than anything.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

Some of football's gaudiest displays of manliness are purely aesthetic. It's not what players do, it's how they look doing it.

The reason I'm drawn to it is - both the off road racing and the motorcycles on the track - it takes a lot for me to quiet my brain and anything that requires 100% of my attention and focus I find very soothing and that is the closest I get to being content.