Girl on Guy with Aisha Tyler - girl on guy 182: thomas q jones

Episode Date: April 29, 2015

join record-setting running back thomas q jones and aisha as they sprint through country life, working the hoot owl shift, going hard for others, wanting to win, moving the goal posts, revising expectations and hitting the reset button. plus thomas pulls back the curtain on loyalty in the league. girl on guy is playing moneyball.

This is Girl on Guy. Hey, everybody, this is Girl on Guy 182. Welcome to the show. Welcome, everybody. This is a great episode. I can't wait to get into it. But I always want to remind you to come say hi at the website, Girl on Guy.net.

You can send me a letter there for the annual listener question show. It's never too early. Come follow me on all the social media. And visit the website to get your Girl on Guy gear, including T-shirts, books, posters, etc. don't forget that we are going to have our annual fan appreciation event this July at Comic-Con. Stay tuned to the show as if it was a television show. It's not, but you know what I'm saying.

There will be more information as we get closer to the date, but you know you have to get up very early on the 4th of July in order to win tickets to this thing. And the first 100 tickets go in moments, not in minutes, in moments. So get geared up for that. It's always an amazing time and meet the fans and give away presents and essentially just give you stuff to thank you for being a member of the Army. So it's a win-win, and if there was another way to win, it would be or it would be a third win. But that's coming up this summer, working very hard on Courage and Stone.

In typical business fashion, we have hit some production delays, and our launch may be pushed into the fall, but that is not a tragedy. That is us working hard to make sure that the product is the best thing it can possibly be. So I will continue to keep you apprised as things move forward. I had some insane fun this month going to London and visiting some incredible bars, including 69 Colbrook Row and a place called White Lion, where they actually do bottled cocktails. Very, very cool. I posted some photos on Instagram if you want to check those out. But it's been fun researching this product and getting it ready for a market,

and we're, we're keeping things in high gear now, but we just want to make it perfect, so it's probably going to be pushed into the fall of launch. But I will continue to post you as we move forward and work very hard to bring you the craft cocktail experience in your very own home, in your grubby, grubby mitts. So stay tuned for that. I'm doing one live show, as I may have mentioned recently, just one live show scheduled for this spring. It is in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Academy of Music at the Bamfest, and it is on Saturday, May 9th, Bullseye Comedy Night with Jesse Thorne, and an incredible lineup that includes, well, me, and Maria Bamford, a part of the Danchurla, Ali Wong. It's a really, really fun show. It's one of the only live shows I'm doing in 2015.

So if you are anywhere near Brooklyn, that's within driving distance, my friends. And driving could be a couple of several days if you're motivated. Come to the Banfest. You can get tickets via the link at AishaTiley.com. Just click on Aisha on tour. You will see that solo, that very lonely solo link because that is the only show I have scheduled so far for this year. I may be doing a few shows in the fall and obviously at Los Angeles Podfest. and I will be keynoting podcast movement 2015 in Fort Worth the weekend July 31st. So that is something that is worth checking out. If you're near Fort Worth, it's not going to be a stand-up event,

but I will be delivering the keynote address all about podcasting and things and ideas and making stuff in art. And that could be a pretty cool experience as well if you're anywhere near Texas. Now, Texas is fucking massive. But let's just say you're in Texas or the environs and you feel motivated to, take a road trip. That's going to be a very cool, big podcast conference. Lots of podcasts that you know and love will be there, and I will be keynoting. And that is August 1st. So that's something look forward to summer road trip to Fort Worth, Texas. You know you've been planning it. You know

you've been saying to your friends and family. You know where you should drive this summer, Fort Worth. Maybe you haven't been saying that. But my point is, now you can. Now you have a reason to go to Fort Worth, Texas, the weekend of July 31st and August 1st. I will be speaking at the podcast movement. And you can find links to that on my Twitter feed and I'll also put some stuff up at the website. This show is brought to you in part by Birch Box. And this is a brand new advertiser that I'm super excited to bring to you. And if you go to birchbox.com and use the promo code Girl on Guy, you'll get 100 Birchbox points with the purchase of your subscription, which is equivalent to $10 to spend towards new products. Now, here's how Birchbox works. You subscribe and every

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known as Thomas Q. Jones, who is one of the top. top 25 leading rushers in NFL history, and now also one of the top 25 leading rushers in Girl and Guy history, if I can put that fine, have a point on it. This is such a great conversation. I haven't had a lot of pro athletes on the show, but I'm always really curious about their lives, and Thomas has a very specific and unique life, which you will hear about as we move through the interview. We get right into it right at the beginning, a very unique background and experience, and you learn all about really the path from childhood to professional athlete in his story, which is fascinating. By the way, he has set multiple NFL rushing records, including

five straight seasons topping 1,000 yards, which is extraordinary and all kinds of other impressive benchmarks. But I think what's most impressive is his path to professional football playing, and then what he's done since then. And he talks very honestly about what it felt like to retire and how difficult and challenging that was emotionally. He also talks about, you know, you will hear it as we move through the show, but some of his issues. issues with anger as he was playing football, which I imagine affects a lot of guys in that league, even guys that come in and they're not particularly heated personalities. It's a league in which heated personalities are rewarded because you need to be intense on the field. So he may say some

stuff that you find challenging, but I encourage you to listen to the entire story because I think it has a really compelling, well, it's not an end because he's now a working actor. He's on a show called Being Mary Jane, and he has all kinds of other projects going on, documentary films and narrative films and he's had made a real turn in his creative life since he left the league. So this is just an interesting conversation. And I'm very excited to bring it to you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Girl and Guy 182 with National Football League running back and actor Thomas Q. Jones coming at you. Straight off the Girl on Guy scrimmage line and right into your face. Thomas Q. Jones, welcome to my show. Thank you. We're doing it. I'm so excited to talk to you. And I just

want us to start at the very beginning because I feel like you're such a unique backstory, such a unique childhood. So we're just going to go, we're going to start right at the beginning. Tell me where you were born. I was born in a small town of Virginia called Big Stone Gap, Virginia. It's population 4,500. So my graduating class was about 116 people. Wow. Very, very small town. And it was a coal mining town. Yes, coal mining town is coal mining is the biggest industry there. and it pays the most, I guess, because, you know, it's one of the hubs for coal. And my parents grew up in a town called Stoneaga, Virginia, and they had coal camps there, which were basically houses that were built around the coal mines.

So there was coal dust and coal in the air, and they used coal for their stoves and all that. So, yeah, I grew up in the coal. So it was a big part of their lives when they were growing up. Huge, huge part of the coal mining industry was a huge part of their lives. Both of my grandfathers moved from Alabama to Big Stone Gap, Virginia and Appalachia, Virginia. They're like 10 minutes away, the same two different towns, but the same industries. And they were coal miners as well, both my grandfathers were. I'm going to ask you some questions that are going to seem like I'm pretty ignorant.

No, that's okay. But I'm so curious, because I grew up in California, and I've been to the south a bunch, and I love the south, but I don't know it. I don't think I know it very well. I wonder, and my father were construction. So I know, like, for my father, like, a black man on a construction site, like, what that dynamic was like. And that wasn't that long ago.

But I guess I wonder what it was like for your parents and their parents. How was the coal industry for black people? Was it integrated? Did people interact? Was it, like, you know what I mean? Like, did people get along or was it competitive? Yeah, I mean, from what I know from, you know, my parents, both of my parents worked in the coal mines as well, my mom.

mother worked. My father worked for a year and was laid off and couldn't get back in my, and my mother worked for 19 years underground. Wow. Wow. Yeah, she worked at the 12 a.m. to 8 a. 8 a.m. shift. It's called the hoot-ow. Hoot-ow shift. Okay. Yeah, but they got a hoot-out. Yeah. Hout overnight shift. So, yeah, I mean, I can't really speak that much of my grandfathers, but, you know, by the time my mother and father started working in the coal mines, it was a fairly good environment. You know, as far as integration, you know, there were a lot of black coal miners there. Obviously, you know, there were a lot of white coal miners there, but everyone seemed to get along.

Obviously, you know, you guys are dealing with the same issues. You're going into a cave miles underground for eight hours or longer if you're doing overtime. So anything could happen, you know, anything a rock could fall on you, the mountain could cave in. There's certain patches in there where there's really like no oxygen. So there's a million different things that could go wrong. So I guess it's almost like a team. You guys have to stick together. So, you know, underground, everybody's black.

I guess it's not. Oh, that was so good. How many women were actually working underground as well? That must have been, was that unique? Very, very, very unique for women to work underground. I mean, unheard of. Right. But my mother and father, you know, they,

you know, didn't like condoms, so they kept having kids. So, you know, my mom, you know, I mean, my mom had to do what she had to do, you know, and my father worked, and he didn't like it because, you know, he didn't want my mother in that type of dangerous position, but he couldn't get back in. So my mother ended up starting, and the next thing you know, um, 19 years later. Right. Was that a union thing that he couldn't get back in? Um, well, it just, I mean, I'm not sure exactly sure why he couldn't get back in. I mean, they had the coal miners union.

It was funny because they used to have, they used to have it going strike because they wouldn't be getting the wages they felt they deserved. So as a kid, you don't really understand how dangerous the job is. You don't really don't understand. You just know what mom is at work. She comes home. She has a lunch bucket and she has like a honey bun and some chips left over.

She didn't eat. So we're like fighting for the lunch. You know, food left over and stuff. And we didn't realize that, you know, her clothes have cold dust on them. She's, her face is pitch black. from the coal. And that was just what we were used to. I guess maybe when I got into maybe seventh, eighth grade and I started, I lost a friend, friend's father died in the coal mines. He died in the mine. A rock fellow, a rock fellow on my friend's fathers. And I think that's when

I realized, whoa, this could be, this could be my mom. And that's when I really was like, this is something serious. And I have to get her out of here the best way I can. But earlier, before that, we'd go on strike. And my mom would say, you know, you're not going to school today. I'm like, okay, we're playing Nintendo and like, wow, we got a day off from school, but we didn't understand, like, you know, you might, my mom and dad might not get paid. Right, right. You know, we're just like, we have a day off. So you just have no connection at all with the severity of what's going on until you get

older. And then I'm like, and now I look back and I'm like, shit, I wouldn't even go, I don't even want to go in front of the coal mine, let alone go in. Right, right. Yeah. And like you said, no sense of what we know now about coal mine. which is that it was dangerous physically for the miners. They were breathing that air, that dust, those gases,

and then it was coming home with your mom every day when she came home from the mine. Yeah. But I imagine there had to be some sense, I don't know, I guess I've heard this or seen this in other places, some sense of pride too because, you know, it was something that her, you know, that your grandparents did and that your parents did and it was how they paid the bills.

Yes, definitely. It's something that was, I mean, it paid really well based on just the danger and coal is a global resource and I think when you come from a town like mine where we're so secluded and people don't even come to our area because they don't have a reason to

you know you dig the coal out you ship it to other places no one comes there that you know to us it was everything so now when I still mention my mother worked in the coal mines it's like what? Yeah. You know they don't They don't get it.

And I think because I've been away from home for so long, I understand more, I understand the people outside of my town now, where when I first mentioned it, I'm like, what's the big deal? Right, right? Everybody works at the coal mines. Yeah, like, well, your mom didn't work in the cold mines? Yeah. Wow, man.

You know, but it's crazy because it's a really, really dangerous job. And I'm playing football, you know, is similar because it's very dangerous. And that's something I love to do. I love to do that job and it's dangerous. and my mother didn't love working in the coal mines, but she loved working, and she loved the money that was coming in to take care of family. How many siblings were you all together?

I have five sisters and one brother. Yeah, that's a lot of you. Seven, yeah. I told you, no condoms. There was a no condom rule. A rule. In force, not just what you forgot, but no. No kind of rule.

No condoms allowed. Yeah, it was seven of us, and I have two older sisters. my older sister's 45 and I have another older sister that's 42 and I'm 36 and then my brother's 33 and has a twin so they're 33 and then I have a sister that's 30 and one is 26 so I'm right it's right in the middle there how was that for you with all those kids were you I don't know people always talk about the dynamic of the middle kid kind of being overlooked how did you feel I mean was that what it was like for you were the first boy too so did your sister's like no you know what I had I had I was blessed I was right in the middle so I had I had I was right in the middle so I had to have three older women, including my mother. Yeah. And then three younger women, include my soul. I pretty much have a cheat sheet on women.

I can see that. Girlfriends for Dummies book that I was able to create while I was at home. And yeah, right now I see so many different things in women that I understand now because I grew up in that situation. I have two older sisters that still treat me like a kid. Yeah. Now I'm a grown man. They still call me little time.

and make fun of my clothes and, you know, they come to my house and they're like, everything's a joke. Right, right. You know, and I mean, they do that in front of everyone. My sister goes on Instagram. She's, I'm trying to be cool on Instagram, and she's going on my IG saying, oh, my God,

where did you get that sweater? I'm like, wait a minute. Like, yo, other people can see this, Gwen. Like, chill out. Call me on the phone. Yeah, I'm like deleting her messages. She's like, did you just delete my message? I'm like, out of 300 followers.

I'm like 40 comments. And hers are like, she has five comments. I'm like, yo, what are you doing? But then my younger sister's like, they literally see me as the big brother. And they rely on me for a lot. And I take pride in being the big brother. So I was blessed because I was right in the middle. I got to feel what it will see what it feels like from both sides.

Right. I read on the internet that your parents were really dedicated to education and that your parents would make you, your dad would make you like learn five new words every day. read the front page of the newspaper. Is that? Yeah, yes, yes. You know, both of my parents, they got married when they were young. My mother had my oldest sister when she was 17. And they didn't get a chance to go to college and graduate.

My father went to college, but he left college because he had kids. And he had to take care of his kids. So I guess he didn't want us to grow up only, they didn't, both of my mom and dad, they didn't want us to grow up thinking that the only way you could be successful. with sports. Right, right. Because unfortunately, when you come from areas like that, you're not exposed to that much. And your icons and idols that you see are mostly, especially being black, you see our entertainers or athletes. So big world, we can do everything too. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, if you're not, if you don't really know what's going on, if you're not educated on what's

going on, then you won't even know those options are out there, those opportunities are out there. So he wanted to make sure that we were students first and then athletes second. And that's one of the things that I really am very grateful for because I played for a long time and I did a lot of really good things in sports. But I'm more proud of the things that I did that had nothing to do with sports. And, you know, my dad would make me, I would have a 300-yard rushing game in high school and I would get the newspaper and the sports page will be gone. And I'm like, okay, well, where's the sports?

Wait a minute, right, yeah. And he's like, well, you have to read the front page first. and then we have to learn five new words a day. I want to spelling me in seventh grade. I'm really proud of that. Wow. Yo, that's serious. That's an accomplishment.

Yeah, I want to spelling me in seventh grade. And then I went to regionals and got beat. It was me and this other kid, and I got beat. And I was, like, devastated. But, yeah, I'm proud of that. I want to spell me. Because, you know, when you read so much, you know, you naturally start to see how sentences are supposed to be.

You absorb a lot of stuff that you don't even realize that you know. Yeah, it's true. A lot of things that you don't realize when you're reading. And I used to read a lot of those books like the Ramona Quimby's and the Henry Huggins. You know, so my imagination was always out there and I was always very, I was a creative kid. But that really just enhanced my thought process because I literally was like, wow, I can really do all these things. And I would know about current events. I'd watch the news with my dad.

And even if I didn't really understand, I asked questions. And he did the best to answer me. Even if you knew I might not understand, and that's helped me so long, the whole way, because right now I'm in a place where any kid that I talk to, whether it's a former, a younger player, a student, I find myself doing exact same things. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it creates a comfortable dynamic, right, that you can talk with anybody about anything, you know. Anybody about anything, especially when people see you as one thing. Yeah, I mean, I want to talk more about that later in the conversation, but, um, But I'll say it now, and then I'll put a pin in it, which is I imagine that people see pro athletes and they very much see them as one-dimensional. Oh, yeah.

You know, yeah. Yeah, we're one-way street. Yeah, just, you know, like a big, like, you know, like a lunk. Yeah, big, you know, dumb, you know, you're good for what we see you do. Right, right. We're not real. Yeah. Characters off Madden or Major League Baseball, EA, where EA sports, EA sports made us.

And interchangeable, too. I mean, like, you know, I see that with my friends that are sports fans. I see it because of the culture, like the way we look at pro sports, like even something like fantasy football. You know what I mean? Where it's just about the guy's stats and his numbers. It got injured. Forget that guy. I mean, you know, like the way, you know, it's just like pieces on a, and I'm sure it can feel that way when you're in the league, too.

Yeah, because I came in, when I came in a league, there wasn't fantasy football. Right. So it just kind of happened. It came out of nowhere. So it went from people respecting you for your ability And what you actually did, you know For the team Right, right

To, you know, people hating you because you had a bad game Right, one week of bad numbers Yeah, it's like what? Right Like how did this, wait, wait, wait, where did this happen? Like, when did this happen? Because I still don't understand fantasy football I still don't like, I'll see people in the opening

I'm like, I'm just young, hey man, you want me a lot of money on my fantasy football team And I'm like, okay, man, that's what I'm sorry. Where's my cut? Seriously. I want to come back to that because you were talking about the fact that your parents very much wanted you to see that you had other options besides sports. But when you were young, when you were a kid, did you want to be an athlete? Yeah, I loved football.

Football was really, really big in my area of Virginia, most small towns like that. Yeah. There's really nothing else there but sports. So my uncles played football. I had her uncle that was really, really good. He's in the Virginia High School Hall of Fame. is my mom's brother, Ed Clark. He was like a legend.

And they grew up in a town called Stonegger. So his nickname is the Stonegger Stallion. Say that name of that town again? Stoneaga. Okay. Sto N-E-G-A. All right, thank you. Sto-Legger.

Yeah, yeah. Most people don't know how to pronounce it. It took me a while too. Just want to make sure I heard her right. And was that even a smaller town than Big Stoke-O-Gap? It's like here where we are. It's like here. Oh, wow, like tiny.

Yeah, very, very small. Only difference is there's, like, coal on the walls, coal on the floor, coal on the table, cold dust everywhere. You're breathing it in, you step in, it's there, you wipe something off, it's there. Wow. When you were growing up, did you, because, you were, you know, obviously your parents wanted you to have a sense of the world that was a big world outside, you know, reading the paper every day and watching the news and talking about it. But, you know, I always wonder, especially when you live in a small town, how much your sense of, the idea that everything is very different everywhere else than where it is for you? Like, did you have that sense that like Big Stone Gap was like a unique way to live or very different

from the rest of the world? I think because my parents always wanted to expose us to other things and because we always had encyclopedias and we would have to read the newspaper. You know, little by little, I saw the world differently than my friends. Yeah. And my dad, you know, he worked at the university 10th. for a while in the admissions office. So we got to go to the University of Tennessee football games.

We had a chance to go to those games and me and my brother. And we were, he made sure that he exposed us to things. Which is so big for kids just to expose because you never know where their mind's going to go. And that goes for positive things or negative things based on what they're exposed to. But he exposed us to things that we wanted to do. You know, he knew that we loved football and we showed that we had, you know, kind of some special talents at young ages. And he exposed us to those things.

And, you know, it really, really was different for us than the other kids because he made an effort to make sure that we saw other things. And that really helped with my mindset because everything I saw on TV, I never thought I couldn't be there or get it. And if anything, it just drove me that much more to get there because we're so secluded. I didn't have, I didn't have access to anything I saw on Yo MTV Raps or watching a college football game or a pro football game. Like, we didn't have a pro stadium, pro team.

But all these things just made me like, I've got to get there. I got to get there. Right. You know, and I think now it's the same. I'm still in that space. I have to do more. I have to get there. I have to do more.

Yeah. I understand that mindset perfectly. Yeah. When did you start playing football? I started playing football when I was seven. Like Pop Warner? Pop Warner. Well, I guess when football's that big in a town, they start the kids really young.

Yeah, really early because there's nothing else to do. There's, there's, there's, my dad's always say, if you want to rob a bank, you rob it on Friday night, because that's where it's where it's, Everybody's there at the football games. Right. The cops, fire department. Everybody's there. You know, I guess even the robbers are at the game.

Right. Not, they can't rob the bag. Yeah, Friday's a good for banks because everybody's at the game. Nothing else to do. Nothing. And football is just everything. Like, I value my high school career more than my pro and college career. Wow.

Because, you know, I went to school. I went to school with those, my teammates since kindergarten. Yeah. Since I was five, six years old. Yeah. And, uh, We did really well in high school, won two state championships back to back. Yeah, you beat some records, right?

Didn't your uncle have a rushing record that you beat? Yes, yes, yes. Yes, my uncle had a record. Sorry, Uncle Ed. Yeah, he had the record, most rushing yards in one game. And ironically, I came behind him and broke the record against the same team on the same field. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So my uncle, he actually passed away in 86. He drowned. He was in Florida saving. He saved a couple of kids and drowned. Oh, my brother. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, he, I know he would have been proud. Yeah.

He would have been proud. But, yeah, I mean, just walking around my high school with my jersey on, sitting in class, you just felt that sense of pride for your town, your community, your school, and the whole town was behind us, and my high school had a good history of winning. It was crazy because when I was in high school, they would get me out of class, like, on Fridays, and they would let me go talk to the middle school kids and the primary school kids, So they'd have an assembly program and let me talk to them every Friday. Oh, that's sweet.

And they retired my jersey before I graduated. What would you talk about? What would you say? Because you're still a kid at this point yourself. Yeah, I'm still a kid. But I guess because I was really good at a young age. When I was a freshman, I played varsity and everything, basketball, football, baseball. I was this kid.

Yeah. But I played like a senior. Yeah. So it was weird because I had this baby face and my voice. I had a very, very country accent, very deep, like, country accent. Like, you wouldn't even know it's me. Wow, really? Did you have to work to get rid of it as an adult?

No, I just went away eventually. I'm a chameleon. Yeah, yeah, you transform. When you go home, does it come back? Comes out. Yeah. I mean, I would say, like, oh, man, I can do it, too. I want to hear it.

Let's hear it. Well, I mean, I don't know. I just try to do what I can do, you know. my accent was crazy crazy southern like my mother when I talk to my mom I listen and it's like she sounds the same

but because I've been in so many different places that you know it's like wow you know I've just been able to adjust to wherever I am to transform I'm like one of the people I hear things and it so um so yeah I would talk to them about you know doing well in school and all the you know I would say you know

all the boy kids students you know you guys want to be future Vikings on day like yeah like you know girls you want to be cheerleaders yeah you know but it was cool because I was like 14 15 years old but I just taken on that responsibility of being a leader because of the environment I was in my father he he worked two hours away and I had to literally be the man at a young age 10 11 years old I slept with a crowbar next to my bed and knife like just in case someone came in because I had literally to kind of take care of my younger siblings and and then be the man there because if my dad wasn't there, I took those responsibilities. Right.

And I think now, as I look back, I had to grow up quick, really quick. And I had a good childhood, but I had to grow up, like, really quickly. But I guess sometimes that hurts people. It actually helped me. Yeah. I have a question about that specifically because, so here's the thing. And this is kind of like one of those old stories where we've got like a small town high school and a bunch of stars on the team.

and a lot of guys are really talented, but they don't make it out, right? Because you can be born with athletic talent, and I guess I wonder what you think it was that was different about you than some of the other guys that you played with. Was it just that you knew you were going to leave? Did you work harder?

You know, when I was five years old, I told my mom and dad I want to buy you a house in a car when I go to the NFL of five. And I just always knew that's what I wanted to do because I love football. and my dad and my mother, they never discouraged me for my dream. They supported me in all aspects.

And my dad, you know, I went to lift weights. You know, I'm five, six, and I see all these big guys on TV. So I want to lift weights. And I'm like, Daddy, can give me some weights, you know? I'm like, five. He's like, no, you can do push-ups and sit-ups every night. Yeah. And so I said, okay.

So from the time I was like seven, eight years old, I did push-ups and sit-ups every night. and my younger brother would do the same thing. And over the course of 10 years, 11 years, how long we did those every night, what it was doing more for us physically was, it was doing way more for us mentally. Because, you know, some nights you're tired. Yeah.

And you're like, oh, man. But my dad, he's like a wizard. He was like a wizard, man. Like he really manipulated us to make, to get us to work hard because we wanted to make him proud. We wanted to make him happy. We didn't want to let him down or make him think we were lazy or we didn't want it. Right.

So I would get up at like three and be exhausted. I'm like, Julius, come on, man. Yeah. And he's looking at me. I'm like, come on, we got to do these pushups because if he asks us. Yeah. But see, that's the difference, though, because you know you had a lot of friends who would be like, yeah, I'm going to do them too and then do them for a week and then fall apart.

They weren't. They weren't. They weren't. And we knew if he asked us, we can't say we did. If we didn't. Yeah. So, you know, I would, we would do them. Yeah.

And then it was so crazy because I didn't even understand the body. I didn't understand how it worked. When I got to college, I remember I was in this girl's dorm room and we were making out and stuff, right? And I had my shirt off. And she's like rubbing my stomach. And I didn't really know that a six-pack really. Was a thing?

Yeah, like I didn't really know. Like, I just, I've just been doing sit-ups my whole life and push-ups because my dad. I don't want to make my dad upset. Right. But I'm like, wow. Wow, this is working. It's funny. I don't think kids have a sense of their bodies at all.

I mean, I was an athlete in high school and college. I don't even remember what I looked like because I was just focused on performance. Exactly. Right? Like, am I a, oh, hold on a second. There we go. Like, am I effective? Am I fast?

I never thought of how I looked. Never. Never. So that was the first time. And it was actually a girl from California. Oh, was it? Yeah, me and Cali girls have a nice chemistry. Long history.

Yeah, long history. She was like webbed in my stomach and she was like, oh, look at your stomach. And I'm like, what? She's like, well, you have a six-pack and I'm like, six-pack. And we're like, doesn't everybody? Yeah. I'm from the country, too. I'm like, what?

Six-pack of beer? What are you talking about? And it was, I mean, literally like, my father literally pushed us and he actually made us understand that mentally, if you can outwield these people. Because when my area, no one comes there. There's no reason. Right. So in high school, I had crazy numbers.

You know, my junior year had over 3,000 yards rushing, and then I had over 3,000 my senior year. And I had 44 touchdowns my junior year and 49 my senior year. And I ended up coming from a single-A school in Virginia to being the second best running back prospect of the nation coming out of high school. Made it pretty much every All-American team. I was on Scholastic Sports All-American team. It was crazy because I woke up at like 2 in the morning.

I couldn't sleep, and I just turned to ESPN. And I see that in 1996, Scalastic Sports, All-American. American team. So I'm watching. I'm seeing all these guys. And then they go from Virginia, Plexico Burris, and they show his highlights. And I'm like, I've never heard of him. You know, he's on the tie. He's in the tie water. He's like eight hours away from me. He's like, another Virginia boy. He broke all the Terry Kirby's records. Thomas Jones. And I'm like, oh, oh! Ah! I'm like, Julius, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. And he's looking at me like, what? I'm like, y'all, I'm on TV. I'm on TV. It was so crazy. Yeah, it's surreal.

And you had no, I mean, obviously, no idea. No, no idea, because I didn't have access to those to those things you know and this was like you know I'm 17 old kid like yo I'm on ESPN like I'm on ESPN they show my high school highlights like four or five plays and I was in school the next day like beaming like yeah yeah it was so surrounding out then I was in um sports illustrated my senior year and faces in the crowd and um I was on the cover of a couple of national recruiting magazine magazine um magazines and it was like All of the things, I would sit on my, this was like a straight movie that we're really going to shoot. I would sit on my porch.

And what we're from, they're stars. There's no pollution. Yeah, right, no light pollution. Yeah, nothing. And I would sit on it. We had a tar paper house and I would sit on the porch with my dad. And I would say, Daddy, do you think anybody who ever know about me? Mm-hmm.

And he would just be like, you know, you just keep working hard. They'll find you. Yeah. And that was comforting because it made me be like, well, he said they'll find me. Yeah. He's not going to lie. And I know what I have to do. Yeah.

Yeah. And I did exactly what he told me to do, and it happened. Yeah. It's crazy. Now, for people who are not professional football players, was there a path? Did you know what the path was to the NFL? Because you're obviously, you're setting all these records in high school. But really, you know, and you're thinking about eventually you're going to the NFL,

but that's a long, it's a long distance between Big Stone Gap and the National Football League. Yeah. Do you know what you have to do next? Are you, like, do you have a lot? a plan? Oh, yeah. Okay. I always had a plan. I always had a plan. I was like, okay, look, my mom and dad, see, my goal was to make it to the NFL to buy them a house in a car, not to be an NFL star. Right, right. Which is a whole other story. So I was like, you know what? I graduated. I was class president, three years in a row in high school.

You were also really academically driven. I mean, I understand you got your college degree, like, in three years or something like that. A little bit of an underachiever. Yeah. Yeah, right. So, yeah, so you were kind of, you were achieving on two different levels. Yeah, on both levels, because I wanted it all. Like, I was the type of person that, like, you know, I wanted everything. I hated being typical.

I hated being one dimensional. Like, I was the one athlete that was in the advanced classes. Like in seventh grade, I took pre-algebra instead of math seven. And in 10th grade, I was in French three where most people were in like French, one or Spanish, one or two. I took physics and English, my senior year in college, I mean high school, I'm sorry, at a college. community college. So I had three classes at the high school and then I would go to the community college and took physics in English. I wanted to take the best. I wanted the best and the hardest. Like I don't want anything less than that. Right. So I was always the one athlete that

they were like, okay, this is this black kid. And my town is like, there's really not that many black people in those courses just because, you know, there's not that many of us anyway. And I was the one that was always in those advanced courses, AP history, everything. And in my dad worked in admissions at the University of Tennessee, so we kind of understood how it worked. So, yeah, when I got to college, I talked to the, uh, uh, Catherine Jarvis. She's sweetheart, I love it at death. She, she was working with, uh, the athletic department and the athletes and in our classes and things. And I said, listen, Catherine, I'm 17. I said, I want to graduate early. And she's like, well, why? I was like, because I may have to come out because my mom and

dad are really struggling. And I may have to come out early. If I do. well enough here. This is, I hadn't even played it down yet, but I'm like, if I do well and I'm able to come out early, I want to at least have my degree already. So she looked at my classes that I took and I had 13 credits. She was like, well, this is how many credits it's going to take if you major in this? I want to major in psychology. So I'm like, okay, cool. So I would take 12 credits in the fall so I could really, really focus on football. And I take 21 credits in the spring. And then while most guys in college during summer school, they're taking one class the first session, one class of second.

Just some layups, yeah. I was taking two each session. So I was getting a whole semester in in the summer, 12, 12, boom, boom, boom. You know, so by the time, and I didn't say anything to anyone. Yeah. But by my junior year, I was all conference, first team all-ACC, and I had a second round grade. And I was like, you know what, I want to come out. I already had my degree.

I mean, guys were looking at me like, what the hell is T. Jones doing with his cap and gown? Right, right, right. Because there were guys that were like 60 years seniors, you know. He's got like 30 years old. Right, right. I mean, again, it's like, you know, even guys that want to just prolong their college experience because they don't want to go. You know what they're going to do or they don't want to go. But it's, I mean, you were obviously very driven.

I mean, was it easy for you? It was easy when I thought about my family because I loved them, you know, and, and, you. I wanted to, I was like, man, you know, my mom and dad sacrificed so much. And I wanted to really, I was driven by other people. When you're driven by other people, you go harder than you do for yourself. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And only selfless people understand that. You know, I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything I could to get my mother out of the covines.

Because I didn't want to get a phone call about my mother. I would have nightmares about that. And I didn't want my mother to get black lung. and, you know, all these things that come, carpal tunnel, all these things that come with working in that type of industry. I mean, my mom is in a cave. My mom is in a cave, you know. And in Virginia, I've been caving.

You know, there's really nothing to do in my town, but go caving, swing off great vines, like, things like that. You know, it's like Tom Sawyer or something. Yeah. So I know what it feels like to be in a cave, and she's in a cave, yeah, 12 hours, you know, and it's already dark at night when you get to work. I just envision those things, and I was like, I got to get her out. So my junior year, I was going to come out, and Ricky Williams and Edwin James came out early.

And the guy at the compliance office said, listen, you can come out. I didn't red shirt either, so he said, you can come out and you'll be, they say you have a second round grade. Or you could stay. More likely you'll be one of the, you'll be your first round grade. You can take out a million dollar insurance. Grade. So is who, is that based on your stats? It's based on the scouts.

and their analysis of your play. Okay. Because there's certain guys that don't have really good stats, but based on what they see on film. Right. They have potential. The potential is there for them to give you that type of grade. So, yeah, I had a mid-second round grade.

So I'm adding up the number. I'm like, okay, if I have a good pro, I may move up. If I have a bad party, I move back. If I get hurt, then I'm screwed. Mm-hmm. And I guess that's always in an athlete's mind. Always. Yeah. But I was like, you know what?

I want to come back. Mm-hmm. And then I was in a master's program for education. So you decided you wanted to go back. You decided you didn't want to go out. You didn't want to go out early. Yeah, I didn't go out early. And I stayed and I took out a million dollar,

Lloyd's of London insurance policy. And that was insuring yourself, ensuring your drafts? Yeah, in case I had a career and an injury. Mm-hmm. then that's the amount I would get from the insurance company. Interesting. Wow. Yeah.

But, you know, if you're a highly high prospect, you know, they're saying that you're going to go high in a draft, then you usually have a lot to do that. Smart to do. So I came back. I was in the master's program for education. And my senior year, I killed it. Mm-hmm. Killed it. Like, I mean, 1,800 yards.

I was Consensus All-American, first team all-American. That's Aethan Heisman, really with no promo because my team is Virginia, and when I went to Virginia, I was going to ask what kind of a football school. I mean, I'm terrible with college football. We were a good program. We were a solid program. You know, we were on the rise when I got there. But we were the number one public school in the country because I wanted to go to a school.

When I came out, I had like 95 scholarship offers, and I ended up choosing between Notre Dame and Virginia. And I picked Virginia because. It was closer to home. My family came to me play. Plus, it was the number one public school. It's kind of like an Ivy League. It's like Stanford. Right, right.

It's kind of has an Ivy League mistake. So I wanted to at least have a degree because I knew that because I'm an athlete, people are automatic going to assume things about me. So at least I can have that degree to put it in the door like, whoa. Right. See, he says Virginia, give me a chance. Right, right. Yeah, let me explain myself.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, literally killed it. Consensus All-American, made every All-American team. Doak Walker Award finalist. Was there something about that year? I always wonder about this for elite athletes. If there's something, when they say, like, I had an amazing season, did you train differently?

Was it mental? Or was it just that you had been on this trajectory and you were just getting? Oh, yeah. It was just like, because the year before that, we finished, we had a great year. We were like nine and three. At one point in the season, we were ranked number five in the country. And we had a great year the year before that. We lost a lot of really good players to the draft.

And I guess because I wanted to win so bad. You know, in high school, I won 26 straight games. So football was everything to me. I wanted to win. I wanted to win a national championship. I wanted to win a national championship. I was just one of those guys. So every game I played like, come on, guys, come on, we're going to win a national

championship. Unfortunately, we didn't even come close. But at least, you know, the fact that I had that mindset drove me every week. And I was doing things that I don't. don't know. It was just one of those magical times in your life where you can't really explain it. You just know that you're so in tune with what you're doing and things are happening without you even really realizing it and thinking about it. It's kind of like how that was my junior in high school. You know, I had 3,300 yards. I look back out. I'm like 33 hundred yards. I'm wondering if like that ever happens in the mate, like in the NFL. No way. I mean, over a thousand. And you've, you had like five consecutive seasons where you rushed more than 1,000 yards, right? But like has anybody getting 30 through it? It's crazy. It's like. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a lot. It's like a lot. It's like a lot. It's like a lot. It's like a lot. It's like a lot. It's like a lot. It's like a. It's like a. It's like a. It's almost 300 yards a game. Yeah, that's insane. And I came from a single-A school.

So even when I got to, when I went to Virginia, a lot of the guys that were there were like, ah, you know, because they played at AAA schools and double-A schools. So, yeah. They're like, ah, you know, this guy's the number one player. You haven't played against anybody. Uh, you know, this guy, you know,

and I was like a buck 80. You know, I got to college. This guy, like this guy, like this. This guy, they've been sweating the whole time. Right. Him, this little 5-10 guy, he's 180 pounds. and I got there. When I got to Virginia,

I was on the second-only depth chart behind Tiki, Barbara. And I went through practice. First day of full pads, I got a concussion. Boom, my man, Anthony Point Dexter hit me. First day of full pads. And so now everybody's like, oh, and you all these haters, they're happy.

They're like, yes, see, I told you. You wasn't. I told you. And I ended up working through it. In the first game, I was one of three freshmen that dressed out, the only freshman had played. And on my first carry, I broke a six yard run. That's incredible. I had five carries for 78 yards in a touchdown on my first

college games. Yeah, you should do it everybody. It was, yeah, I felt so, because these same, my freshman were like, the same guys that were in the locker room after that day that were like, oh, man, you got knocked out are the same ones that are looking at me like, yeah, kiss the ring. Right. And I'm from a single A school. You're all from all these triple A five in these schools. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, kiss the ring, kiss the ring. Well, the proof is on the field always, right? Yeah, yeah. Let's get out here and prove it. I took a lick, but I'm back. I'm up, you know.

So I don't know. I just think that, you know, that year was very, very special. And I think because I had already graduated too, I didn't have that pressure on me. So, I mean, I would be the guy literally, I'm driving around, I'm driving to my friend's dorm at 12 with a six-pack and some black and miles. And I'm like, yo, yo, you like, we got class. I'm like, come on, man. Oh, you're like that senior kicking it with nothing to do. Yeah, but these are all the guys that I came in with because I graduated.

I'd already graduated. Right, right. And most of them were older than me. Right. So I was like that young, I was younger than them and I'd already graduated. And, you know, I literally go from one dorm to the next, like hoping someone was up because that's before cell phone. Right. So you had to drive over there.

Yeah, it was, it was crazy. That year was so fun because I literally got a chance to really play football and not think about too much. I only had two classes. And yeah, it was crazy. Crazy. I don't know. That was a really special year. You that, so your junior year, you had a second round grade. But you got drafted first round. So tell me about everything. Tell me about everything.

Tell me what that was a lot. Because, you know, so again, it's something that most people are never going to experience, first of all, being any kind of a round draft pick, but a first round draft pick in the NFL. And I wonder, like, how that whole process, Did you have to get an agent? Like, because now you're, this would have been, what time of the year is this? This is, um, my, my senior year, um, agents started to kind of reach out during my, um, junior year quietly, you know, people showing up at your dorm, um, you know, people just calling

your phone, like, who is this, you know? And then when they saw the grades going into your senior year, the top prospects, and it's over. They're literally like sitting in your living room. Right, right. So it was a totally different year. Were they approaching your parents? Call them my parents.

Oh, wow. Showing up on your, you know, I get home from practice and they're like sitting there like CIA or something in a car. Right, right. Yeah, it was crazy offering your money, offing your whole bunch of stuff. And it's so tempting because you're like, man, like, I'm tired of eating Pringles for dinner, you know, like. Mm-hmm. And this is what I've been working for in my whole life. Yeah. Were you afraid of making the wrong decision?

No, I wasn't because I've always, I'm a very analytical person. I think things all the way through before whatever decision I'll make. And I always have a backup plan. So, no, I didn't because I was like, you know what? The more I produced on the field, everything will work itself out. I knew I was going to be with one of the top agents. Because really a top agent, I mean, come on. You go get the guys who play well.

Right, exactly. It's a no-brainer anyway. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's not like they've got to cultivate something in you. You've done all the work already. There's a scale that they get paid. So, you know, they come around. I don't know if I had an agent from, I was with IMG, Tom Condon.

And, you know, he represented Peyton Manning, a lot of other guys. And so obviously he used those guys. You know, we represent Peyton Manning. We represent Adrian James. And I'm like, listen, man, like, you know, I'm already, I did the work. I understood it. Right. I understood it.

So anytime someone comes to me with any type of proposition or any type of situation, I've already studied it. I already know the ins and out. So you're not going to gain me. It's like, you know, I just need your brand. That's it. So I didn't feel like I was going to make the wrong decision. I made the right decision.

And it was just a crazy process. The round is in the spring? The draft's in April. Okay, in April. The draft is in April. And I was the fourth. best prospect during my senior year. So your grade was upgraded

that senior year by far? Okay. They considered me to be a top five pick. And then after the season, some people had me going three, some people had me going fours, I'm going to five. Now that I'm listening to you talk, you seem like a pretty cool cucumber. So I was wondering if you were nervous or anxious at all

about it. I think I was just excited to get my mother out of coal mines. That's another story, what I'm saying, because that was my goal. My goal is like I look on a Mel Kiper prospect list and I'm number four. I'm like that means I'm going to be able to get my mom out of the corner. Right, right. This means something.

It's not like you're going to seven fall off the list. Yeah. You might move around but you're not going anywhere. Yeah. So that's what was driving me my whole time was that. Like during games and, you know, working out, working out extra after practice or doing extra sprints. Like these are the things that I thought about.

And to see my name number four, number three. It's like I'm thinking, four, three means a car for my mom, recall from my dad. So I wasn't thinking about the NFL. I was just thinking, like, making it. And then when they invited me to the draft, I was so not into the NFL. I was just into making it that I had a fashion show that I had agreed to do in Virginia. And this is when they only invited the top five picks. Okay.

Now, usually they invite the whole first round, right? Yeah, they invite a whole lot of people. Yeah, but this is just top five. Invited five guys. Wow. And so they invited me because I was supposed to be the fifth pick to Baltimore to the Ravens. And I said no. Because I had a fashion show.

In Virginia. I had a fashion show. So I'm like, what? Nah, I was just fashion show, man. Oh, I'm good. So they were like, what? You're going to tell us no to a fashion show because of a fashion show? So they said, listen, what day's your fashion show?

I said, it's Friday. It's like, okay, look, do your fashion show Friday night. Saturday morning, we'll fly you up here because they wanted that. Yeah, yeah, it's a show. It's a look, yeah, and you got to have the guys there. It's not a good look for anybody if you can't get the guy there. Yeah, and they want to go out with the jersey. They want to do the whole thing, the conference.

That's the first time I felt like I put pressure on the league. That's good, though. Yeah, do it your way. You know what? Yeah, okay. So it flew me up there Saturday morning. And I was like, man, I'm going to go to ball. Baltimore, I'm going to be close to home.

Yeah. And with the fifth pick, the Baltimore were able to like running back, Jamal Lewis, you know, he always in Tennessee. I'm like, oh, and why did I even come? So I'm looking at my agent. Because then I knew the second team needed running back was the Cardinals. Right, right. Who were terrible. Oh, no. At the time. And I didn't not want to go like all the way. I've been in Virginia my whole life. Yeah. So then right before the seventh pick comes up, my phone rings. Mm-hmm. 602

Area Code Hello? Hey, it's the Cardinals. You ready to be a Cardinal? I'm like, you knew it. You knew it. No!

I'm like, but then a part of me is like, I'm the only one left, so it's embarrassing. Yeah, like, let's go. Let's get this going. Yeah. Just get me at his room.

Right, right, right, right. And I'm on the phone. I kind of smile because I'm like, wow, I'm going to get drafted, but I'm like, oh, no. Like, it was the worst. best feeling ever. I mean, it is right.

Because this is what you've worked for your whole life. The whole life. First round traffic into the NFL and everything you've always dreamed of. Yeah. Right? But it's not the team that you wanted to go to. No, it's not the team.

But I'm getting my mama dad a car. I'm getting my mother at the coal mines. Like, it's like so much. And I'm 21. And it's like I'm still a kid. You know, and they say with the seventh pick, there's on a cross leg running back. from Virginia Thomas Jones, and I walk on the stage, Paul Tagliaboo, you know, he's in my jersey,

and I'm just like, and it never really hit me that this is a job, like, it never hit me. Right. It didn't hit me because I'm so used to playing for the love of the game. Right. And now it's like, this is it, man, you made it. So the Cardinals wanted to fly me out that night to Arizona, and I said, no, I've got to go back to Virginia because I'm having a draft party. So I flew home that night

I'm in the draft party with my number one jersey on lit. I'm going to fire. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm going in. And it hit me the next day. Yeah. I got to go. I have to go to Arizona.

Yeah, move all the way across the country. Yeah, like on Martin, what you mean to say? I just didn't want to go to Arizona. Little Martin, no, Martin, when he had the episode where he had his fake son. I don't know. Everybody else to see that one to see. No one to talk about. But that, that was how I felt.

Yeah. I was like, and I got. on a plane, flew out to Arizona, landed at 12 midnight, got off the plane, never been there before, step off the plane, whoo! Oh, that heat. I'm like, okay, maybe the ACs off in the airport or something. It's like standing behind a plane. It's like standing in jet exhaust, yeah. So I go out to the baggage claim, get my bag, and it's still, I'm like, oh, man, so I know when I get outside, it'll be a breeze. y'all stepped outside that was a microwave

it was like I was suffocating I'm like what in the hell is and it's 1230 and you're from Virginia but you're from the like the hills right so it's cool up there yeah yeah and it's humid it's not yeah that dry desert heat I mean I was like what what is this

like what it's like someone had a fan on heat just constantly blowing on me but there must have been something bigger than that which is that up until this point you were kind of the architect of your own destiny in a lot of ways, right? You played in a high school that you grew up around. You knew all the kids, your friends, everything familiar to you.

Even going to college, you go close by. Your dad works at the school. Everything you know, right? And even though I imagine for guys that play college ball, the team plays a big part in your life, this is the first time where the team owns you. They made the choice and they own that ass. It's like, you know, when you get up. Like everything you do is theirs, right?

So you're in this unfamiliar place and you realize for the first time kind of like someone else is in control. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Which I didn't understand until I was drafted. And then when I really got to Arizona and I was like, I left after the first few days of mini rookie camp. It still didn't hit me. It was in Cancun for Memorial Day. Got my big chain on and popping me and my friends.

no-peds like, oh, yeah, you know, didn't get it. Yeah. Didn't get it. Then I realized like, okay, season's coming around. I'll hold out. More money. Nope, they work the deal out. I have to be there first day.

So I get to camp and I go straight from the plane because I got there later than everyone else. But I get off the plane and I literally go straight to the facility in flags. So I land in Phoenix and drive hours up into the hills, the Flagstaff. So I don't know where I'm going. It looks like I'm on Mars. Right. And this is like high altitude now. Way up there.

Now it's not even hot anymore. So I'm like, okay, how does this like, how does this work? You know, it's like 85. Right. I was just in 120. Now it's 85. I go straight to locker room, go into meetings, go on the practice field. And I'm stretching.

And here comes a guy in a suit. And I'm like, okay. He hands me something to sign. I look at it. It's the first part of my signing bonus. So I signed it, and I was like, you know, wow, because I had signed the paperwork. Still didn't know. I didn't know until I said, I'm not playing special teams to the special teams coach,

and then they took $5,000 out of my check. Oh, oh, gosh. Then we wore white cleats, and I wanted to wear black cleats, and then they took $5,000 out of my check. Wow. And I still didn't get it. Yeah. Okay, you come to a meeting, and you don't have your. Cardinals clothes on.

Like, I can't sit in a meeting with... Right, just your own street clothes. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you're supposed... It's like FedEx. You don't just delete these stuff with your own clothes. Right, right. There's one dude he's got like Dickies in a T-shirt. Yeah, like, what are you trying to break in or something?

Like, what are you going to rob me? I mean, that's how they were. It's like, oh, my God. And then I didn't bring my playbook. So my coach's like, here, here, my runner back coach. And I'm like, what? He's like, you don't have your playbook? You don't have your playbook?

And I'm like, no. Why? Just I'll use his. He's like, no. Right. Like, this is your briefcase. It just did not hit me. So I did not work well in Arizona because the team at the time wasn't really that good.

We didn't even have our own stadium. It was just a really, really bad situation. And I was blessed enough to go through a lot of tough times in Arizona. And I wouldn't change anything because I learned so much. I learned I broke my ribs three times. They misdiagnosed me. I had shortness of breath. I thought it was going to die.

So you had broken ribs and they diagnosed you as happening something else? Or they just didn't catch it? Well, they told me that because what happened was my ribs came out of my stern. Oh, yeah, this little piece of cartilage. They pop out of that. Yeah, in the center of your chest.

Yeah. I couldn't breathe. Wow. That's terrifying. And I was like, I couldn't breathe. So I had to take Ambien just to sleep. My mother was horrified. She's like, oh, my God, my son's going to die.

And I told him that I couldn't breathe. And they're like, you're just saying that because you're having a tough year. You're having panic attacks, panic, anxiety. They told me I had valley fever. They sent me to the Cleveland Clinic. They gave me an inhaler, said I had asthma. I'm like taking albuterol. My heart's beating on my chest.

Oh, Albutarol is terrible. Especially for an athlete. Oh, God, million things they told me that was wrong. And I was just like, so again, they gave me a Paxil, Gannix, gave me these things to. Oh, for anxiety. And I never took any of it. Mm-hmm. You never took any of it even?

I said there's nothing. No, they made me see a psychologist, a psychiatrist. And I'm major psychology, so we're both looking at each other like, you know, what are you doing here? I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. They should be in here. Right.

There's a doctor. His name was Dr. Chick. If I could see Dr. Chick now, like, I literally would be just, me and Dr. Chick one-on-one, man, that would be fun. Yeah. This guy literally, and my dad calls him and says, well, what the hell is going on in my son? And he goes, well, I see where he gets to panic at anxiety attack from. My son can't breathe and he's not crazy.

He told me that he can't breathe. So in the offseason, I went home. My rookie year was horrible. I went home. I was working out of a regular gym Lifetime Fitness and I saw a chiropractor for the first time of my life. And I told him I couldn't breathe and he said, well, I have a dull pain here and I can't breathe. And he put these three ribs back in.

Oh, my God. But what it did was it just taught me like, okay, this is a business. Yeah. I'm a product. My body is my business. So I have to know my body how it works, take care of myself. And better than anybody else. Yeah.

And I can't trust this person, too. He's got his own kids. He's got it. That thing, he's got, it's not that he isn't anything against you. He just has his own agenda. Yeah. Yeah. Man's getting paid to give me on the field.

Right, right. He doesn't. Right. You know what I mean? So I learned that at a young age of 21, 22 years old. And I was like, wow. And unfortunately, a lot of guys don't understand that. And they come into the NFL and they are so happy to have.

an NFL logo on their clothes or be a part of a team or be a part of an organization. But it's like, no, man, it's a job. And then what I was saying earlier as far as a whole other story is that when I made it to the NFL, I didn't have any goals. My goal was to get there. Right. My goal was never to be an NFL star. It was to get to the NFL.

So once I was there, I was like, okay, over the first couple of years, I had to figure out what do I want to accomplish here? What do I want to be? What do I want to do? You know what's also interesting about this? I wonder if you felt this way. Because I felt this way when I went to college. Yeah, absolutely.

Help yourself. That when you're in high school and you're the valedictorian, you're the star, right? That's a handful of other kids that get good grades. You're a small group of people. And then I got to college and it was like everybody, everybody that got into my college was the kid who had the best grades in their school. So, I mean, not that I'm complaining, but you're not special anymore, right? So, like, you're a star in your high school.

You're a star in your college. But when you're at the NFL, every single guy at camp was the star of his school, right? And so you don't have the same clarity you had before when you knew I'm the rushing champion. I'm the record holder. Everybody holds a record for their school, their town, their college, whatever. And then you've got to figure out a new way to approach the game, right? You have to because everybody is great. whether they're physically great, strategically great, mentally great, technique-wise, someone does something great.

And when you make it to any pro-level, professional level and anything, but especially like sports, you know, in the NFL, it's chess. Yeah, yeah. You know, we're, you know, the pawns, you know, and the coaches and the teams, they're playing chess with. But they want to put you where they want you to go. strategically, it's like, this guy fits this system, this guy fits this. We bring the coach in for these guys. It's like, it's a crazy system because the NFL is set up really like, set up like the military, if you think about it. You know, you have, I try to explain this to people that don't really know much about football. I try to explain it to them how it works because the military, you know, back in when football was first, football first started, you know, you had Navy and Army, those teams were really, really good. Right, right. Because there's a lot of military terminology and concepts that are in football. You have your president of your team.

You have a president of the country. You know, you have a general manager of a team. You have, I don't know, Secretary of Defense. Right, right. You have the coach. You have the sergeant. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And you have the players and you have the soldiers.

Right, right. There's a hierarchy. Mm-hmm. It's about money. Mm-hmm. whether you're trying to take someone's money or take someone's property. So when the football field is the same thing, the football field is a grid. If you look at it from over the top, it's a grid.

There's coordinates there. 50 on line, 40. And you're trying to penetrate your enemy line. Yeah, exactly. Red zone. Oh, they're close. You're trying to take someone's turf. They're trying to take you offensive, your defensive.

Right. And it's the same thing psychologically because guys are getting hurt. The next guy gets up. Right. It's so interesting because, you know, as a fan, you'll watch the game. and a guy will get hurt, and there'll be that moment of silence. But then, you know, they sweep that dude off the field. They go right back to the playing.

Yeah, no one waits to find out what happened to him. No one's there, but his family. Yeah. It's like a guy gets killed in the military. He's in his family. So he's going to push through, yeah. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the game. Right.

We get paid, obviously, you know, for what we do, but we get paid based on the scale and the money that's brought in. Mm-hmm. So you did your, you did your rookie year at, Arizona. Arizona. And then did you leave that next year? No, I played there for three years.

I signed a four-year contract. I played there for three years. I broke my hand. Not playing football. Whoops. You're not supposed to be getting hurt when you're not at work. So I broke my hand and, you know, I did it at home. And it was, I have a plate and five screws in my hand.

So that's a really bad break. How did you do it? I did it at home. You punched something? No. I mean, I hit something on accident. It was a bad break. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I had a bad reflex. But that's a, I mean, I have a plate in five screws. That was a pretty serious break. So you couldn't play through that. No, I missed the last eight games in, so they didn't pay me. Mm-hmm. For the last day, put me on a non-football injury reserve list. Is that a rule?

You can't injure yourself outside of the... No. If you do, then it's up to the team's just, and say, you know what, we don't have to pay them. And they didn't pay me. It cost me like $160,000. Wow. It's my rookie contract.

Looking back at that injury, I wonder. I mean, I wonder how you guys conduct your lives away from the field because you're kind of precious cargo everywhere you go. You can't just be like, I'm sure guys do it all the time, but you can't just be like, let's go dune bugging or I took a rock climbing, right? you have to kind of go gingerly. So was this something in retrospect, like when you broke your hand, was it something that you could have foreseen happening?

Like was it something that you go, God, I wish I had done things differently. No, no, it wasn't. It was a freak accident. Honestly, it was a freak accident. And, yeah, we can't. It's in our contract. You can't get hurt doing those things. I mean, one guy named Todd Streets, he played for the 49ers.

He doesn't name Todd Street. He played for Michigan in college. I think he tours Achilles or something, playing basketball, a pickup game during his career. That was it, right? Yeah, because we take too much of a risk playing. And you kind of was like, you wrecked you. Like, we needed you to stay fresh for the team and you went off and wrecked yourself.

And then that was it. He could never come back from that. No, he couldn't. His injury was just like, and then you get turned off. Right. And then when one team gets turned off, then the other team is like, okay, it's like, well. Plus there's always new guys every year. Always.

Always. Always. Younger, new, bigger, faster. Right. Do you guys feel that? Do you feel that pretty keenly as professional players? There's always going to be a younger friend of the guy. All the time. Because the older you get, you make more money. Right. So if they can bring a younger guy in that can do almost as good or just as good or don't let them do better and they got to pay them less, you're gone. Right. You're out of there. That happened to me. That happened to me after my best season.

So, yeah, I mean, literally, it's in our contracts that we can't do certain things. and I missed the last eight games, which was a blessing in the skies because my brother had gotten suspended from school from Notre Dame for a year, and he came out to live with me. And we both just literally said, okay, what are we going to do, man? Yeah. You know, my brother won three state championships in high school. He was an All-American.

He was in Notre Dame having a great career, but he got in some academic trouble, and we literally hit the reset button. It's like, listen, man, I got a contract. I made it to the NFL. You went to Notre Dame, you had a good career up there, you have a year left to eligibility. How do we want our names to be? What do we want our legacy to be? Yeah.

And we literally said, you know what? Let's rock, let's go. So we were in the gym every morning, 2 a.m. We worked out where no one noticed us couldn't really because we just wanted to be incognito. Right, right. And for about eight months, he went to University of Arizona, state. I paid for him to go to school there so we could get his grades up and get reinstated. After about eight months, he gets reinstated back in the Notre Dame.

and I get a phone call that I'm getting traded to Tampa Bay. Wow. And they just won the Super Bowl. So I went from arguably the worst team of the league to the best team. Yeah. How excited. So it happens so crazy. And again, you're excited because you're moving, but also you had no control over where you were going to go.

That's the life of a professional athlete. The team, the league decides, right? Well, unless you're a free agent and then you can decide. Right. But not early in your career, right? Well, if you're drafted, no, you have to go there. Right. And if you're a high pick, you go to usually the teams have the worst record.

Right, right, right. And then when you get there, they expect you to just say, hey, you know what? I'm going to put the whole team all back and turn this whole team around. It's like, no, it doesn't work with that in the NFL because everyone's good. Right. I was an offensive player. Our defense was really bad. Right.

Really bad. So we didn't even have our – I didn't even have a chance to even do anything because I would be on the sidelines watching the whole game. Right. Things fall apart. Yeah. I mean, I'm watching Marshall Falk and all these guys just run up and down the field. And I'm just like – So then by the thing.

time you get in, you're so anxious to do something because you haven't gotten in that you overthink it. You do something you shouldn't have done. You try to create a play when she's just stuck with the play because you're just trying to make some rain. Just trying to earn my paycheck. I'm trying to let people know this while they pick me. So much mentally and psychological that goes on that people have no clue about. Did you have a system? Did you have a method for managing your mental life as an athlete? You know, some guys are really good at the mental game, right? They are really good regulating their emotions. Some guys aren't.

You know what I mean? I wonder how it was for you, like just trying to stay on point. I just went back home in my mind. I went back to a big stone gap. Just the appearance of the game, how I grew up, the genuineness of just my family

and just that place where everyone's not out to get you, everyone's not out to take your money, everyone else, they're not out to screw you, that I'd out to expose you. I mean, it was tough for me in Arizona because, you know, I started off rough, so I'm coming to stadium and you see a sign that says first round bus.

Thomas Jones sucks. I mean, these are all things that literally, like, I went from being the seventh pick in the draft to being voted one of the worst picks in the first round that year. Like, it was just like, you feel, I feel so far. And it wasn't because I didn't work hard. Right. It's just because of the situation I was in. and I'm 21 and they've given me this money

so I can say, you know what, screw you? At least I have money, but that's going to go. Right. And that's not what you ever, I mean, that's not what you put your whole life into you want to, yeah. Not at all. Plus, I didn't understand money. I didn't major in finance, you know, I'm making psychology. So, you know, I didn't understand that, hey, you know,

$5.7 million sign a bonus really isn't $5.7 million. It's actually like four. Right. And then, you know, when you lose $160 to breaking your hand, then you lose another, you know, 30,000 for funds. And, you know, I mean, it's like, right, right, you know, like you don't understand. Meanwhile, you're still buying this and buying that.

Were you like that when you first got all that money? Oh, yeah, it was, I was the man. Have you seen, this is a little bit off piece, but I'm curious. Have you seen that 30 for 30? I think it's called broke. Uh-huh. I mean, I think we all have this fantasy about how it is for NFL players. And, you know, you were a top, you were first round track pick.

So obviously, like, your contract was massive, right? But then we always, they're all the guys that came in, they're coming in. They're not even like a full, you know, they're not seven figures. You know, they're maybe like mid-six or whatever. It's hard because you're a kid and you got all this money and it seems like it's bottomless. Right? Yeah. It is.

It's, you don't think about, you never think about not playing at 21. I think you're going to play for 20 years and win the Super Bowl and go to Hall of Fame. You don't really think that you're going to play one contract and that's it. You can't think like that or you won't be in a league. Right. mentally you have to think I'm going to be the best and I'm going to work like the best and I'm going to play like the best and I'm going to make the best money. Whether it really happens or not, a lot of times in the NFL is out of your control.

Yeah. Because there's a lot of politics and there's a lot of situational things that come up that really just have nothing to do with you. It's just a luck of the draw. Right. I was blessed enough to learn earlier that the NFL was a business and that's how I approached it. I played on five different teams. I didn't take, I didn't have any loyalty to what. team because I knew they didn't have loyalty to me.

I had loyalty to the fans because I know the fans are always going to root for that team and for me. But I didn't really have loyalty to the team. So, I mean, you know, like, and as a fan, again, like, you know, you look at something like the 49ers trading Jerry Rice.

You know what I mean? You realize they don't. The teams don't have any loyalty to players. You know what I mean? At the end, they're like, if I can use this player to get me these three guys, right, for the same price or whatever, it's all just, like you said, it's chess pieces. business. Yeah.

First. Yeah. Like, people don't realize Woody Johnson that owns the Jets is like, he owns Johnson and Johnson. Right. You know, so not only are you giving him money for seats for the game,

but you're also buying baby powder and pizza. Right. He's getting, you know, he's doubling up on you. He's coming up both directions. You know, like people don't think of that.

They just think Woody Johnson. They don't think like, these people have to make their money first. Mm-hmm. It's a business for them. And also they don't. You know, Woody Johnson's not going to get knocked out of league if he hurts his hand. No, he's, I mean, there's, Woody's a great owner.

You know, he's a great owner. Took care of players and, you know, there's a lot of really good owners. But then there's some owners, the owner for the Cardinals when I was there, bidwell, I mean, he would walk through the locker room and wouldn't even say hello. Wow. Walk right through the locker room. I'm like, okay. That's crazy.

But, you know, we're not there for that. I had to realize like, hey, this isn't college, this is in high school. It's a business. This man is trying to make his money. He paid you to do a job. You need to score touchdowns and you sell jersey so he can make his money back. That's why he paid you. It's not personal.

He don't have to speak. Right, right. He's not here for it. He's not here to be a friend, man. Did your life transform when you moved to Tampa Bay? Oh, yeah, definitely. changed because I finally was like I felt like I had an NFL experience. I'm like because because in Arizona it was just no one was happy there. No one was really happy there. You know, it was 120 degrees

we're playing outside in Arizona State Stadium. You can still see the Sun Devil's logo like because they had the night the game the night before. The fans, you know, they love the team, but it's too hot for them to really come out like metal bleachers like. Oh gosh. It was just bad. You know, we were in NFC East, so we had to fly to the East Coast three times a year to play the Giants, the Redskins, and the, and the, uh, Eagles. And then we had to fly to Dallas and they only had to come to us once. Right. Right. So I'm like, how are we in the NFC East when we're on Pacific time? Like I didn't, you know, I didn't understand any of that stuff. It didn't just, it's almost like they just threw us in somewhere. It's like, here you go. Here's, you know, the last guy that gets

picked up on the team. Like, okay, well, we need him to make five. Right. You know, like pick up game. That's, that's how it felt. So when I was traded the 10, it was, traded to Tampa, it was like, I get there and my first meeting with Coach Gruden is like, I'm like, okay, it's John Gruden. I go through the locker room. I'm like, and what's so crazy is that two other guys I play with in Arizona, they were there. Semyon Rice and Michael Pittman. Yeah.

So then I see all these guys, you know, Derek Brooks and, you know, Warren Sapp and all these guys, you know, Boogh McFarland and Mike Allstott. I'm like, okay, Ronde Barber, I played with him in college. I'm like, okay, this is the NFL. This is what I signed up for. Yeah. So my mindset changed and my approach to the game changed because it was football. It was like, this is what I saw growing up.

This is what made me want to be here. Besides, you know, getting my parents and putting them in a better situation, this is what I saw. So my mindset changed and my approach to the game changed because I felt myself hating football. Really? Really. Was there a period where you thought you might not continue? Right before my brother, when my brother was suspended. It was like We literally were like

F this We come from a football family We're not going to We're not going to go out like this It's not even about the money It's about who are we I name on the back of our jersey You know

We're the Joneses We're Jones brothers We've always been beast in football Always people respect us We always knock the shit out of people We've always been tough We've always been smart We've always won

you know, we're not going out like this and we collected, we said, we're not doing it and we busted our ass and we got back. So when I got to Tampa, I was like, on a mission. And there was already seven running backs there. So literally. And you came and you weren't going to be first. You weren't going to be first straight.

No, no, no. I came, I was traded in June and the season started in July. So I got there, I was traded right before, like, a month and a half before the season started. So I didn't even really, I didn't know the plays. Right. And the first game we played was, training camp started July 13th, and our first game was in Tokyo.

We played in the Tokyo Bowl in Japan. And I didn't really know all the plays, but I knew enough to make plays. And I was bigger, stronger, faster. Just my whole mindset was just like I just plied a chip on my shoulder. I was just angry. And then that's how I played that whole year until I eventually got a chance to start. And then after that year, I was a free agent. And then that's when I could control my own.

Right. Because then I was the number one free agent running back. I went from being the number one. one bus to be the number one, I went from me to the number one running back prospect to the number one bus to the number one free agent, like, all within like four years. A handful of years, yeah. Crazy emotional roller coaster. Where did you go?

I went to Chicago. You had, I mean, you, you, it's so interesting that there's been so much diversity in your experience because you went on to set all these rushing records. I mean, you had like, I think, I read one thing and I'm not even going to remember, like, I know that you had like a run of just like five seasons of like over a thousand yards and including your last season with was it the bears uh the jets the jets where you had like 14 more than 14 hundred yards in a season um and that there was something else in there about you have being having like the highest rushing record or the highest number of carries since like 1978 we're still

setting records so it would be it so interesting to hear because i think most people would look at your overall career be like it must have just been great for him this whole time i must just clicking, clicking, clicking, right? No way. No way. But I imagine that you had to constantly kind of like reboot your approach to the game. Yeah, always had to prove myself. I kind of blame my dad and my mom for naming me Thomas Jones because it's just sounds normal.

Right. So you hear Thomas Jones, like, oh, that's just Thomas Jones over there. It's like, it's not. I mean, actually, I almost never do this. People know that I ever do this, but I want to read it out because you probably know it better than the internet. But yeah, I mean, you had just like the series of like extraordinary seasons. And then when you went to the Jets, you did have quite a nice, you did, you did have

quite a nice contract when you moved. Yeah, yeah. Did you feel, again, did you feel differently there? And you had gone to the Super Bowl with the Bears. Yes. So that changed everything as well. Yes, it was, I went through a contract situation in Chicago and that year, the year before, they drafted a running back, Cedric Benson, and they gave him a lot of money.

and, you know, I was ready to work with him. But, you know, I just felt like they were trying to just take my job away because I put so much work in. And literally, I was playing literally furious every game. And I ended up having a great year the year before. And I wanted a new contract or I wanted them to trade me. Give me an opportunity. To play.

Yeah, because I know you have to get this guy in. You gave him money. He has to play. Right. I understand. It's not personal, but they didn't want to trade me because they weren't sure about him yet. Right. So they were literally going to have me there.

just in case. Just to groom, help groom him. I'm like, no, this is just my sixth year in the league. Right. You know, I'm not ready to train somebody to take my job. Yeah, absolutely. I have work to do, you know, so they didn't want to give me a new contract. They wouldn't trade me.

So we worked the situation out where they said, well, if you're a good teammate and you work hard for us, after this year, we'll give you a new deal or we'll trade you. And I didn't want to leave Chicago. I loved it there. But after the season, just so happened that season, I had 1,200 yards. We go to the Super Bowl. I have, you know, 100 yards in the NFC championship game, two touchdowns against the Saints, and I have 100 yards in Super Bowl 41.

And I'm like, okay. Yeah. I did it. Yeah. We made it all the way. You know, I was a leader. I didn't cause any problems. You know, I was a good teammate.

But then I think the reality of me leaving was like, so they try to prolong it. General manager tried to prolong it as long as he could. and it got kind of nasty me and my age and I was I signed with Drew Rosenhouse the year before that I fired Tom Conn and I'mg signed with Drew and it got a little nasty we had a nasty conversation on the phone and it was so crazy it was meant to be because I was in New York I was going to do the rip the runway fashion show a few years ago you love them fashion shows yeah I'm stuck something about it I don't know what it is I don't know can I ask you really quickly and you don't have to develop anything they don't want to. But what constitutes a nasty conversation in an NFL

negotiation? Cursing. Like fuck you. Like fuck yourself kind of stuff? Yeah. No, he's like, Were you on the call with your agent? I was on the call. Okay. I was on the call and it was like, hey, look, all the running backs are signing to teams, dude. Yeah. What the fuck? You know, like, you're purposely doing this so I don't have a team to go to. Right, right. Holding out so that you don't have any options. Yeah, I don't have any options. Yeah. So I'm like, What the fuck? I thought, you know, I thought, you know, you had a deal. Yeah, we had a deal.

Yeah. And, you know, he's like, you're just letting Drew push your buttons because I said, I'm not fucking letting Drew. First of all, Drew works for me. Yeah. I've told you several times that I don't want to be in this situation. You told me. I said, you're a man of your word. I said, and I literally was just going off on him.

It's emotional because, so here's the thing. And for people out there, I mean to cut you off. But what is so clear to me, even though I've never been a professional athlete, but I understand as an artist, is that for a business, you're interchangeable with a bunch of other people. But you have one career. You have one.

And for an athlete, even more than an actor, that clock is ticking on you. You don't have unlimited time. I mean, you can think you do, you can think you're going to stay healthy for 20 years. You want to.

But you know, I have to get, I have to play as hard as I can now. I don't know how much time I have. No, you don't. And you have to get that money while you can. And you have a special,

their running back because you know our lifespan is short because we take so much punishment right right and i literally we i mean it was bad i mean there was a lot of motherfuckers and fuck you's and and and i just so happened to be in new york and two days later drew calls me and says hey buddy where are you so i'm in new york you said you're not going to leave this we're you just got trade to the jets i'm like wow that's crazy it was a day before i was actually on my way to the Rip the Runway Rehearsal. So I'm on the way to

rehearsal. I said, okay, so what happens? He said, well, you need to go to Long Island. You need to go there. Facilities at Hofstra and they need to do a physical and they want to meet with you. So I'm like, okay, so when will the trade be done? He was like, well, we'll negotiate tomorrow. So the show's the next day. Again.

Again. It's wild. So I'm up there and I go to the facility and I'm like, wow, I'm going from Chicago to New York. And I just played them that same year and we beat them and I had 100 yards on him so I'm like okay and then they loved me we had a great conversation Curtis Martin was there you know and he really vouched for me to be

the next guy after he left and um the next day I'm negotiating I'm sitting in general manager's office and we're negotiating going back and forth on my contract they ripped the runway people are calling my phone they're like I mean are you coming are you coming right and I'm like I don't know because you know I'm working on my contract and I guess they thought that I was probably like buying like I just wasn't in time right right but then we got the deal done and that night boom oh that was gonna be a fun way to celebrate oh it was crazy I'm in New York like I'm already there I'm traded to the jets I'm like and I'm from Virginia so my family like they can come closer I had a lot of friends from school in New York and I'm like well it's one of the biggest

markets in the world it was just like got a new deal yeah everything you wanted everything you wanted everything that I had gone through everything that I had gone through all the diversity was like, wow, I felt myself from Big Stone, Gav Virginia, big stone to the big apple. Right. You know what I'm saying? And so you, and you, this is where you have this kind of extraordinary, I mean, it's been going, we've been extraordinary, but this is where you have, like, just season after season of,

yeah, of, like, rushing records. So do you feel like this was, like, so from a stats perspective, from a number's perspective, someone outside would say this, he's like at the peak of his athletic performance. Did you feel that way? Yes. And I was older for a running back. Most running back's peak a little bit earlier. I was 27.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I had my best season when I was 31. Mm-hmm. That's when you had the $1,400,400 plus season. Yes. Yeah. Which is rare.

Yeah, because all of the adversity just made me, I played with a really big chip on my shoulder. And I was just, when I got on the field, when I stepped on the field, I played angry. I played mad. Did that affect your relationship with your teammates? Sometimes because I'm such a dedicated person and I don't want to have any regrets. I'm one of those people that I don't sleep.

I work constantly. I'm always figuring out how I can beat this person or get better or make something better. And I think being in New York made it that much bigger because, hey, everybody's watching. I mean, in New York, just one of those things in Chicago is a major, major football city. They love the bears, you know. But in New York, it's like, look, if you suck, they'll tell you suck. Right on the street. You know what I mean? Like, you can't come back there. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like, my first year I did a deal on a radio show with Boomer and Carman every Tuesday on my day off. And I agreed to do a radio. I have my own radio show with Ms. Jones

in the morning in New York on Tuesdays. So my Tuesdays are pretty full. And I'm not thinking that, you know, we're going to be four and 12. Right. Right. So every. Every week I'm getting destroyed. Fans calling, what the hell is going on with you guys? And I'm just like, oh, no. Right. And I'm not necessarily the dude to answer that question. I'm just one guy, right, yeah.

And I had like two touchdowns. I had over 1,100 yards, but I had two touchdowns. And, you know, I got this big deal, and we just were really bad. And I had to take on all of New York City. You know, I had to take on the black audience for a hundred seven. And I had to take on the white fans. With a boomer and country. Yeah.

Yeah. I got it for both sides. It was horrible. I'm like, oh, no, can I get out of this? Like, nope, sign the contract. Right. And so it was a pretty crazy year. But I was like, you know what?

We're going to turn this thing around. We're going to turn it around. And then the next year, I was like, yeah. Yeah, you did. And then that's the year I ended up going to the Pro Bowl. I was an alternate into the Pro Bowl about three times. It was crazy. My best year, I didn't even go.

I was second in the AFC and rushing and touchdowns and didn't. Didn't go. Crazy. You know, it's weird. You know, but I ended up going to the pro, I was starting the pro bowl that year. And it was a crazy year, crazy year. Just like my senior year and I in college, I went from having two touchdowns of 15. Wow.

That's incredible. Yeah. You said earlier in the conversation that you got traded after your best season of your career. Released. Released. Not even traded, released. Why? Because the, my age.

I was 31. I had the best year of my career, 1,400 yards, 14 touchdowns. We were one game away from the Super Bowl. We lost to the Colts in the AFC Championship game. And there were a couple younger backs, young backs under me that they thought. Obviously, they didn't have to pay them.

They owe me $6 million the next year. And I held out of the off-season program because I was trying to negotiate. I was like, listen, I know you guys are scared of my age. Obviously, I'm not the typical 31-year-old running back because I'm in better shape than the 21-year-old. was on the team. But it's cool. Just split the money up. Let's do three and a half salary this

year and three and a half salary next year. We're cool. And they were like, no. So my agent was like, listen, let's just go back and play. And we'll see what happens. I had my best year for the least amount of money on that contract, my best year. And then March the third, I was due with $3.2 million I was signing roster bonus, they cut me March 2nd. Now, when that happens, they not owe you. Because I understand, I mean, I'm assuming these contracts benefit the teams and not the players. If they can cut you to get out of a bonus that they owe you. Just cut you.

Is there any pay or play component at all? Do they have to pay you some of the money? Nope. Wow. They cut me. Roster bonus means you have to be on the roster. Right, right. You're not on the roster.

Boom, no. The day, I'm like, just cut me after the season. Right, right. I mean, I'm sitting there like within a... Waiting, right, even waiting this whole time. They could have cut you in January. You would have a whole, you know, yeah, I'm like, all spring to figure out what you wanted to do next.

But I'm like, man, like, that's like tomorrow, I'm going to give you $3.2 million. Mm-hmm. And then five hours before tomorrow gets here, nah. I changed my mind. Yeah. It's just, oh, but I know what? I understood from a 21-year-old kid in the NFL that it's a business.

Right. So I didn't take it personal. So I started to look for other teams. Other teams were interested. The chiefs, they were four and 12 the year before. But they had a young team, and they were looking for another running back. And I was like, you know what? I visited and I was like, you know, I like it here.

I like, it's Kansas City. I was kind of going through a tough breakup situation. and I was like, man, I need to get in this wide open space where I can think. Because I was in Chicago. I live in Miami. I was in New York. It went from being from big stone gap with nothing to do to having everything to do. So I needed to go back.

And I ended up going to Kansas City. It was so crazy it was right before I signed the deal with Kansas City, the Jets call, and want to match the offer. Wow. And I mean, what did you do with that? Like, how did you feel about that? Were you like... I was like... But your feelings were hurt at this point.

No. Wait, they wanted to match the chiefs offer? Which was less money. Yeah, so they weren't going to pay you the Boston bonus, but they tried to buy you back. Yeah, they tried to buy you back at a lower price once they knew that there was competition for you. Unbelievable. I was like my age you said... You just had to say no on principle, I imagine.

He just let me know. He was like, the Jets want to know. They want you back. I mean, but they want to match it. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, no. Mm-hmm. No.

Because if I had to go there and get less money for what I had earned, like, listen, I understand the business side. But I work my ass off. Like, I was a captain and the team. Like, I stayed till 10 o'clock. I mean, I did every single thing I possibly could to try to help us win a Super Bowl. And to be the best player and leader I could be for that team. and wow man you know

and it's shady I mean it's just shady there's no way around that it's shady I'm sure they thought it was cute and you know but it but it but it wasn't but they thought it would be cute to save money

because that's what matters and I never took it personal no but you had to do what you had to do I had to do so I'm in Kansas City and you know what's so crazy is that the media from the chief said hey you're never going to believe this

this was probably I guess about a few days after I signed They took out a full-page ad in the Kansas City Star, full-page ad. You can Google it, full-page ad with me running. Thanks for all the memories or best of luck to you in Kansas City from the Jets fans, the owner, the general manager, and the coach. And that really made me understand, like, man, they're people. You know, they're people. It's just business.

And I never took it personal. I still have love for Rex Ryan and Mike Tannenbaum, Woody Johnson. I mean, these people, they believe in me, they gave me an opportunity. So I don't forget opportunities. I don't forget anything that someone's done for me. I'm not that kind of person, because people have amnesia when you do something for them. Yeah, they're like, oh, well, you're not doing this. Right.

Well, you know what? You did that. I mean, if you guys wouldn't have believed in me to trade for me, I would, who knows what I would have to have me in Chicago. Right. So I always look at things like that. So I never took anything personal. I still have love for every team. even the Cardinals.

I have love for those guys. They drafted me. They changed my life for the better, changed my family's life. You know, it's a great, great journey. Like,

great journey. I played in Kansas City. I went over 10,000 yards rushing. I was a first runnerback in NFL history to have at least 500 yards seat. At least I have 500 yards rushing with five different teams. Like, all these crazy random,

like, stats. Yeah, you know, I was the first running back to be traded after having 100 yards in the Super Bowl. It's like all the random stuff. I'm like, how do you be this random guy? There's just a couple of dudes just working out all this stuff all day long.

All day long. I'm like, how did you know that? Right, right. But, yeah, I look back on my career and it was like, man, you know, like, I don't think about as much now because of what I'm doing now. And I got it. I was able to get football completely out of my system, but just taking me on this little, like, trip. It's like, man, you know. It was extraordinary.

Yeah, it was a crazy ride. And I got to see them cold country. I lived in Phoenix. I lived in Tampa. I lived in Chicago. I lived in Long Island. Then I lived in New Jersey. And I lived in Kansas City.

I've been coming to L.A. since I was 21. I live in Miami now. I've been there since 2004. I lived in Virginia. I've played in every stadium in the NFL, so I've been to every city pretty much. Right.

I would have been in Denver? What are I doing in Denver? Minnesota, like Seattle. I mean, what am I doing in Seattle? You know? I mean, what am I doing there? New England? You know what I mean?

Yeah. I take the good with, With the bad, you have to. Yeah. You have to take the good with the bad when the bad's first, and you have to take the bad with the good. But, yeah, come on, man. I mean, to have that type of experience is sick.

The Chiefs was the last team that you played with? Yeah. Did you have a sense of when you were like, okay, I'm going to move on from this sport? Yeah, I knew. I knew. I mean, going into my last year, I was like, this is it. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I was like, man, I'm just burnt. you know, I'm burnt. Because I was a physical player. I didn't run away from contact. Like, I was a very physical player, and I like contact. I like to hit. I like to, I think because I got older and started to mellow out,

I realized it was time for me. Because when I played football, I always played with a lot of passion, and I didn't really know how to turn it off. You know, I was always intense. Even off the field, I was very intense and very, hard. You know, I was one of those guys, you know, if I hit a guy and he was hurt, you know, I would talk shit to him or I wouldn't try to purposely hurt someone, but if I heard him, fuck it. You know, that's just how my mindset I was very hard, very merciless.

I mean, I love to hurt somebody. I love to know that they felt me. you know and that's a switch that's hard to turn off even when you're off the field and as I've gotten older I've started to mellow out a lot and and I don't have as much of a chip on my shoulder I know and and I think born into my last year it was like I think I'm losing my edge you know what's like it's like I'm losing my edge so you know it's it's time it's time to go and I literally just played my ass off my last year and played hard I remember before my last game against Denver. It was crazy. It was New Year's Eve and I was in my hotel and our last game was

at Denver. And I woke up in the morning and like I was just crying. I was like, man, you know, I was crying and I was just like thinking, man, I called my sisters and I was on the phone with him. I was just thanking them for, because I knew, you know, that was it. And it was my last game. And I told them thank you for always being there for me, supporting me. And, you know, guys mean everything to me. Thank you. I call my sisters my good luck charms, my sisters. So I told looked at them for every game. And I was a pregame meal and, you know, I was just like, man, this is my, everything was the last. It's the last. It's the last. You know? And I was eating pregame meal and I was looking around to the guys and I got on a bus to go to the stadium.

And I just had my headphones on. I was just like, everything was the last. You know, because in football, it's like there's always, it's always the next, the next play, the next season, the next contract, the next team, the next, next next. You fumble, forget about it. Score a touchdown, forget about it. So you don't really get a chance to have. that last moment. And I got in the stadium and I was getting my ankles taped. I remember like it was yesterday. I was just sitting on the slab.

I was like looking around the guys. And I went back to my locker and I was just sitting in my locker. I was sitting beside Jamal Charles and I was like broke down. It was so crazy. Like I just remember like I broke down and like I just had my towel over my head. And it's like I was just like. And I remember everybody coming over to me and, you know, give me a hug. And then the general manager came over.

you came over and was like, I just want to thank you for everything you've done for the team and what you've done for us. And it's just like, wow, like since I was seven years old, I've been doing this. And pregame speech, I talked to the team and I was crying. And I was just like, man. And then went out there, we played and let it all out. We won. Came back after the game.

And I was in the locker room and I was just talking to the guys. It was like, just cherish it, man. Cherish it because, you know, you don't. You're not going to get this. That's the screwed up part about it. It's because it's a business, but you still have that love for like a kid. Yeah.

So you get caught in that matrix emotionally. And then my mom and dad came to that game. And I just remember after the game, I walked outside saw my mom and dad in front of the crowd and just gave my hug. And I was like bawling. Yeah. I was just thinking like, oh, my whole life has been dedicated to getting you, putting you guys in a better situation.

And this game allowed me to do that. This job allowed me to do that. And now it's over. Yeah. It's so crazy. How you defined yourself for 25 years of your life, right? Almost all of your life. this point. Yes. Yes. And it was

a robot. Like I was a robot. Everything's structured. My life was structured. Time. Time. Meeting at 7.15. You're not there. You get fined. Right. You know, practices at this time. You're not there you find. Everything is time, time, time, time, time. Like military. And for the last,

for the first eight months after I retired, I didn't know, I don't have a wife. I don't have any kids. I didn't know what to do. You know, I was just like, what the hell am I supposed to do with myself? And I started to drink. I've never been a drinker. I started to drink coronas, 8 a.m. 9 a.m. Just coronas, I'm like, I hate beer.

I'm just... Did you feel self-destructive in some way? Or was it that you felt like what's the point? I mean, I'm not going back to the game, and I don't have to be anywhere. I had to readjust my life because I'm used to training for a job. Right. I'm not used to training for my life just to be healthy. I'm used to having some sort of goal.

Just damn air. No, it's okay. That's okay. No, it's okay. But you were saying you had to start to, you've always been used to training for this job. Training for the job, and I always had some sort of,

something that I was striving to do big. I always had something big, something that no one expected me to do. Because somewhere from my town, no one's expecting to go to the NFL. Right. They're definitely expecting to be a pro bowler. Yeah.

So all those things were like things I accomplished. So I can't sit on my couch and watch TV. Right, right. I'll go crazy. How long did that period go on where you were just kind of drinking and not going to do? Probably like eight, nine months. Literally right after I retired. And the Giants reached out to my agent and wanted to know if I wanted to come back.

And I was just like, nah. And then I started working on a project in Miami. I have a production company. and I was working with artists, but see, I'm not an artist. I just run the company and I love music and I'm in the studio. Right. But I'm not the artist. So if I was an artist and I could say, you know what?

Hey, I'm going to win a Grammy. I want to win a Grammy. Yeah. But it's different when you're working towards something for you and someone else. You know what I'm saying? Because I can't sing or rap or play an instrument. So that was ruled out. So then I started to, I had a film's department,

started producing a TV series in Miami with Clifton Powell. And I started acting. it just because, you know what, let me see. And I started, I liked it. Cliff was like, wow, you're natural, you know, you should, you should try this. And I'm like, really? I'm like, this Clifton Powell. This guy's been in Ray.

He's pinking. Yeah. You know, and he's telling me I should try it. Okay, cool. So then I started to take a few classes at a little workshop down in South Florida where I live and I started to like it. And it started to open me up. It started to make me realize like, okay, you got to break this hardship.

shell down. Because in football, you're taught not to be vulnerable. You're taught to be not to be exposed. We're alpha males. You don't get exposed. You don't lose. You don't show any type of weakness. And acting, the first thing you do in an improv class is you have to make yourself look stupid in front of people. You know, with this. Intentionally. Yes. With the exercises and the noises and the, I mean, these are things I would have never done. I'm like, well, I'm too cool for that. Right, right, right. But because this is what we're doing, and it's all different people.

It's not a locker room full of brutes like me, like just savages like me, because we all understand each other. And in the NFL locker room, there's nothing inappropriate. Say what we want, okay? Somebody don't like it, okay, what's up? You fight, boom, get over with. It's just how it is in the culture of the NFL locker room. But being in this class, it's like, somebody's,

God may say something stupid. I can't just be like, yo, shut up, you know. I can't do that. I have to listen and be patient. And then most people are in these classes, you know, or actors are creative and have imaginations. And so they may say what they think and it's not as structured, which really helped me because it helped me get out of that structured lifestyle. It helped me really understand, like, wow, like I can create. I can use my mind. And I don't have to worry about someone is standards like I did. I had to worry about the fan standards, the team standards, the, you know, I mean the commentator standards,

my colleagues, the other teammates, you know, I had to worry about everybody else, what everybody else thought of me. When this is like, you don't have to, and it really started to help break me down and get me out of that place. And now I've been acting since 2012, I'm off and on during 2012 and 2013.

I started taking a really serious in 2014. I moved here. And I'm like a totally different person. Yeah. Oh, it's like, it's like, I mean, like, you know, a butterfly comes out of a cocoon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's different because now I'm, I'm cool. I can go in class.

I can play. I can cry. I can, I'm still me. I'm still, you know, I still have that. But I don't, my energy is different. You know, I'm the exact same person that I was, but I'm able to show that person more now. There's more, all of you, all of you, rather than the parts that you kept closed off before. You know what I'm saying?

It's an amazing transition. So acting has really, really helped me transition from football too, because I was that guy. I was the captain on my team. So, you know, if you didn't do your job, I'm in your face. You know, if you're a lineman, you're like, I'm coming directly to you after the play, because I'm getting the pictures, and I'm seeing who fucked up. And I'm like, you got to block him. You got to come up on a lineback.

gonna get me fucking killed. Right. Or if a guy dropped the ball, I'm like, one guy said to me, one time he said, A. T. Jones, man, this was at the facility. After practice, he said, man, you know on the sidelines, dog, you kind of hard, dog. Like, you kind of discourage you sometimes, dog. And it's just like, it's like 430. So I look at him.

I said, listen, man. I said, what kind of clothes you have on right now? He said, my jeans and T-shirt. I said, yeah, so what kind of clothes do I have on? and you're like you still got your jet stuff and I said you damn right I said so when you keep your jet stuff

on after work then you can fucking tell me what I can say until then catch the ball I'm here till 9 o'clock if you want to stay till 9 then I won't say anything to you I was just that person

because it meant that much to me right you know what I'm saying and I look back at that person and still there but it's channeled in a different way and a lot of guys when they retire they don't have something

like this to channel that energy I have these the raw emotions I give in my characters are the same raw emotions I would give on Sunday when I'm like, yo, let's go. You know, same emotions. It's just inner characters.

You're being vulnerable or me being funny or whatever it may be. It's crazy. It's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, crazy. I have one quick question, and then I want to talk about your film, and then we'll do self-inflicted wounds. And the quick question was, I read that you decided to donate your brain for neurological research very long time from now.

Yeah, hopefully. And I wonder what prompted you to do that. I mean, obviously, people are talking a lot about, like, you know, kind of the potential hazards of, especially, you know, getting hit in pro football on the defense line, on the offense line. And I imagine, you were saying the running backs probably take the most, they take the hardest hits, the fastest hits. They go down the hardest.

Was there a reason that you decided to do that? Yeah, I mean, running backs, I mean, offensive linemen, they're pretty much like this close. Yeah, they're like, this kind of pushing the middle of wrestling a little bit. Yeah, they're like, this is me and this is a linebacker. So we're like, boom, right, like moving trains. Off his alarmmen are like, it's worse than this, but they're like fender benders.

We're like head on collisions. Right, right. Running backs of linebackers and over and over again. Yeah, so I started to, once I retired, I started to put all of these experiences together, and I started to shoot a documentary. It's called the NFL, The Gift, the Curse. And it's a five-part docie series on the issues that, NFL players have outside of football, like financial issues, family, lifestyle, domestic violence.

And I mean, these topics, you know, there's another one, the correlation between war veterans and football players. Like, I've written a crazy script for a movie, crazy script. And it's about a football player. And some military stuff is dope. But, yeah, I started to do a documentary. And I interviewed about 25 players. And we did this in 2012, me and this other kid. And we edited everything on Final Cup Pro at my house.

Great. And I ended up flying to Boston University to interview Anne McKee and Chris Nguyen. And they're really two really, really important people in concussion research. And a lot of NFL players' brains are donated to their Sports Legacy Institute so they do the research. And in the process of me doing the interview, I decided. to do a brain donation because I had a lot of concussions and I was like yeah you know what here you can have it yeah I'm probably gonna be needing it so do you have you feel any effects of all the hits that you took in the in the league uh I guess the scary thing is that when

something does happen I don't know if it's just happening because I'm normal right right or if it's because of all the trauma um sometimes I'll notice that I'll forget the topic of a conversation and not just what I was about to say. And it's like, man, I do that a lot. I'm like, my mom is like, huh? I'm like, what are we talking about? She's like, what do you mean? Like, what are we talking about?

And you start to do it so much that you don't think much of it, just like with anything else. But I think that's why I'm trying to keep my mind so active, do so many different things, learning scripts, because I want to keep it. Because when you retire, you know, your brain goes from being on high alert at all times.

In football, you have to be on high-ler. Boxing is one guy in front of you. Football is 11 chasing you. Right, right. So I have to have instincts and I have to look and see and know I'm in a stadium. I can't hear anything, so I have to know hand signals and plays. And your mind is just frenzy. Then when you retire, it's like,

uh-huh. Yeah. It's just like anybody, like anything else, if you don't use it, it goes bad. And that's what happens with a lot of guys, they retire. And I think because they retire and their minds just, you know, slow down, certainly some of these things happen on top of the trauma, the damage. But as far as I know, no, I have some times where I kind of zone zone out. Like I'll be in the middle of saying something and I'll kind of just like zone out.

Right. And I know I squint a lot. What makes it feel like better? I zone out all the time too. And I don't have any excuse. Good. So I'm just like you there. I'm just like you.

My sleeping patterns are horrible. I mean, God awful. I sleep. I don't know. I don't really get much sleep, but I don't know if that's because I never really slept much. Is that a byproduct of your athletic life, do you think? It might be.

But you know what? My mom and dad do that. I'll call home. I could call him at 1 o'clock, and my mom could be asleep, and she'll answer the phone. She'd be like, hey, you know, was you sleep? She'd be like, oh, no, no, I was just laying here. I'm like, I do that.

I'm never sleep. Yeah. If you ever call me at 3 in the morning, I could have been in R-E-M- mode. I could be doing a sleep test. You call me. I wake up and be like, no, I wasn't asleep. It's just that's how my family is.

Well, mom and dad, I guess they've always been like that because they've always had to work. Right, right. But that's what I'm saying. All these little things I don't know. Some people ask me, I'm like, Mm-hmm. Could be anything.

Yeah, I hope not. Right. Right. Who knows? Talk quickly about your film. I want to make sure we talk about it, the film that you're developing, and it's based on your life?

Yeah, my family wrote a book called Blessings from the Dust, and it's memoirs of our life growing up, and it tells a lot of stories in there about my family and how we grew up and how rough it was in our area. It was very truthful, very honest, very, very honest book. Hopefully it'll be inspirational to a lot of families that come from those places because we actually made it out, and we're still doing well, and we all went to college and beat the odds. So we wanted to have all seven kids. Mm-hmm. We all went to college.

Yeah, fantastic. Mm-hmm. My two older sisters went to Tennessee. My brother went to Notre Dame. And then I went to Virginia, and I have a scholarship. The Thomas Quinn Jones was the first academic scholarship. And I give the scholarship to, I've had 30 students graduate from University of Virginia on my scholarship. That's great.

For kids in my area of Virginia. So in the five counties that are in my part of Virginia that they forget about, anyone that has great GPA, like there's certain. And my mom and dad would present the award every year because I would play during the fall. Right. But they would present me an award at different school. So it was two each year. That's cool. And my three younger sisters won it.

So they all went to the University of Virginia, graduated after me. And yeah, so it talks about just how we made it and like me and my brother and my sister and sleeping the same bed. And, you know, she peeing in the bed and every night we flipping the mattress over. It was some, like, crazy, crazy stuff in there that people would not believe. Yeah. So Tracy Byrd, she's a really big casting director out here in LA Twinkie Bird, it's her nickname. When she met me and cast me for Being Mary Jane, she asked me a little bit about myself, and I told her my story, and she said, well, you guys should write a book, and I had a book in my bag. Yeah.

Because I've been trying to pitch this project since 08, and people liked it, and they went, you know how it goes. She looked at it and was like, okay, I want the book. So she read it. She called me back and was like, we got to do a movie. Oh, that's great. We got to do a movie. That's cool, cool. So we have a writer.

And yep, we're in the process right now of creating a screenplay, really great writer, Lorna Clark. Wonderful. And, yeah, I'm excited about that. My mother, my mother loves Whoopi Goldberg. She watches you guys show. She watches the talk. She watches the view.

So sweet. And they're shooting a movie in my town called Big Stone Gap, where they shot it with Whoopie Goldberg and Patrick. like Wilson and Ashley Judd. So my mom went on set to try to meet Whoopi Goldberg. Dorable. But she couldn't meet her. So she was like, should I go down there?

I don't know. I said, go, go. Just go on down there. Yeah, exactly. And she didn't meet her. She was disappointed. So I said, you know what, Mama, you didn't meet her there, so I'm going to take you to her. So we're going to do this movie and we're going to pop this movie off.

And you're going to be on the view talking to Whoopi about your movie. Oh, that would be so wonderful. So that's what I'm working on right now. We're finishing up the synopsis. and then we have a lot of people that are interested in working with us with this project because it's a unique story of a black female co-moner that had seven kids and two of them made to the NFL. Yeah.

Still going. It's an exciting story. It is still going. Yeah. It's time for self-inflicted wounds. Oh. Yes. Okay.

Oh, you know what? I have an app. I have a technology company. Oh, okay. Let's hear it. Yes. Castar. It's a social networking app that allows people to show their abilities and actually network more

than me social. you still be social. Our catchphrase is network socially, my friends. Ah, I love it. So you can download it is free for iPhone and Android, and it's called Castar. C-A-S-S-T-A-R. The website is Castar app, APP.com. And really cool app.

I came with the idea last April, me and this kid named Joel Robinson from Virginia. Came up with the idea. Found a development company. Boom. It's in my phone. It's sick. That's so cool. And so it's social networking, but with like a personal development edge, essentially, it's like you want to network people to advance your career.

Yes. Well, you get like this is the, you get a six minute, six minute full screen video. You get six pictures. Oh, wow. You can post jobs. You can post events. Right. And you can submit your portfolio to them.

So you could put like an acting reel on there, anything you want, a film you've done, short films, anything. Cool. Wow. Beautiful app. So you have a social reel, too. So whoever you have a social reel to. So whoever you follow, they're pictures. So you can follow people that have job opportunities.

You can follow your friends. And there's 58 different categories that you can look for jobs. Oh, cool. Wow. And real quick, this is your portfolio. Oh, wow, beautiful. So endless information. About all the things you've done.

Yes. Video, if you want to say what's up. Six-minute full video. So if you're submitting to an acting, if you're submitting to an acting, casting, submit your acting role. If you're looking for a plumber or you're looking for me, it's like Craigslist, Instagram, LinkedIn and like YouTube.

All together. Yeah, cool, innovative. Wow. Congratulations. Thank you. That's dope. Yeah. Okay. Self-inflicted wounds. Self-inflicted wounds. Okay. This was when, you know, this was my dumb jock era in the dumb jock era of my life

when I was getting ready to sell my house in Arizona when I was traded Tampa. I had too many drinks, and the person was coming to see my house the next day. And I was coming home, and I thought that I was pulling into the garage, but I was actually pulling into the window. And I crashed into my house.

Oh, no. And it was horrible. Oh. So I had to sell the house to this person because they pretty much were ready to close on it. Right. And it was in the front of the house. Oh, no. So the next day, the realtor shows up and the person shows up, and I ended up losing about $30,000 on the sale.

So that was a huge self-inflicted when I shoot. I may as well shot myself in the leg. It was horrible. Did you know what you had done when it happened, or was it like the next morning you woke up and you were like, who crashed me up. The crash. I see. The crash woke me up.

I was like pulling in because my garage door was open. Right. Right. So, you know, by the time I got, like, it's one of those like, I'm here, I'm here. I'm like, oh, it like woke me up and I looked and I literally had like caved in. And my house is stucco. Yeah. So luckily it was stucco.

caved in like the whole side. Oh, God. And it was like... And you had to get out. You couldn't... You were like, I got to go to Tampa Bay. Yeah, I had to leave. Yeah.

And my friend was sleep. He was in there with me. And he was like, he just looked at me. And my friend usually does... My friend actually crashed my bins into the wall. Okay. Going to get McDonald's. So he looked at me like, you can't blame me this time.

Right. You know. Right. Now, how does it feel? You know, because I was like, how did you, you went to Jack in the Box, man? Like, how do you do that? I was just, and this was probably like six, seven months before. Right.

And it was just like a little fender, um, bender, you know, like he hit his, he hit the fender on the, uh, the back. He was backing out and didn't look. Um, yeah, I crashed my car. And I was, I mean, usually I'd have looked at him like, yo. Yeah. You know, but he was looking at me like, yo. That was those painful self-inflicted wound

because it cost me $30,000 in my house. Yeah. That's well put, succinct. Very much to the point. This was a really great conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much for doing my show. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. A lot of fun. Thank you. That was Thomas Q. Jones. I thought that was a really, really interesting conversation. And, you know, I don't think we've had. I don't think I've had a professional football player on the show.

I don't know. I have a terrible memory. I know we've had professional basketball player. No, no, we had Chris Cluey. But I don't think we've ever had alignment. And obviously not alignment with such an impressive record as Thomas. So I really liked that conversation. No apology for this show. I just thought it was fascinating. And I hope that you did too. And you know what to do. Come follow me, friend me online. Come rate the show on iTunes. Give it some stars. Give it some comments. Keep Girl and Guy on top. Come to Girleng Guy.com. Get your Girlie Army gear. support the show. Come write me a letter. Come tell me how you feel. Come comment on an episode you've heard.

Just come say, what's up? You can do that by going to Girl on Guy.com. And clicking on the little envelope. And maybe your letter will be a part of our annual awesome all listener question show at the end of the year. And as I said, limited live shows, but you know what to do. Just come online and follow me and friend me on all my many handles. Aisha Tyler, Courage and Stone, Girl on Guy. news is always being posted in those locations. You guys are the greatest. You are my army. You are fantastic. You are unstoppable. You are a juggernaut. And you are Legion. I'll talk you on the next one. Late. Girl on Guy is a production of Hot Machine, blowing shit up since 2009.