Speaker 1: No one's good at everything. I mean, that's just not the way life works. What you know is very limited, and what you don't know is limitless. Those who stay will be champions. If I want to be the best, I got to beat the best. Man, if I want to be good, I got to wake up in the morning, I got to do the extra work, and I got to show up when other guys aren't, and I've got to learn, I've got to continue to be open to learning. But I had to take it to a new level that the other guys wouldn't. Nothing was given to me. So I'm going to go out there and compete as hard as I can, and I'm going to treat practice like a game, and I'm going to gain the respect of my teammates every day through my work ethic. I'm going to work hard in the weight room, I'm going to work hard in the film room, I'm going to work hard to be a good student. Whatever they ask me to do, that's what I'm going to do. To the best of my ability. I never once in my life ever said I wanted to be the best of all time. I'm just a story like everybody else. I wanted to be the best I could be, period. And I said, be proud of the man in the glass. Be proud of that man that wakes up every day and does the best he can do with his priorities. We're all talented at certain things, but we can really continue to improve our weaknesses if we're humble enough to identify them, and we can build on our strengths. Focus on what you can control. Focus on what you're getting, not what anyone else is getting. Whenever you get an opportunity, you take advantage of it. You treat it like it's the Super Bowl. You treat it like it's game day. Go out there and treat practice like no one else does. No one else does. And you have an opportunity every day to surround yourself with people to help you grow. You know, I always said we play for the name on the front of our jersey, whether it's the Patriots or the Bucs. Anyway, I play for the name on the back of the jersey, which is my family and the people that encourage me. I was so blessed to have this discipline over a really long period of time. It was a lot of tough competition. But I was never, I would say, like a prodigy. You know, I wasn't like the kid where you see Tiger Woods swinging on the Johnny Carson show at two or three years old, and his swing looks as good as it did at three years old as it did as he grew older. Or, you know, certain players that had this unbelievable prodigy aspect to themselves. I saw myself as someone who probably had some other traits that maybe were hard to identify, but that were really sustainable over time, which was, I would say, work ethic and discipline. There was this discipline that I had that even as 13, 14, 15 years old, where all these other boys were, I went to an all-boy school in the Bay Area, and I remember showing up my first day of freshman year. I didn't have much, you know, hair under my arms or anything like that. I was like, and these other kids came in shaving. I'm like, what the hell is this? I didn't know how to put the pads on in my pants when I tried out for freshman football. I mean, I had never played until that point, except in the streets. So these kids came out there, they had, you know, helmets and shoulder pads that they had worn for four years. I went on the field and I was like, I'm going to get killed out here. You know, and my freshman year, I didn't even play. I was the backup quarterback on a team that went 0-8. I couldn't get on the field, and we never won a game anyway. I mean, it's one thing to be the starting quarterback and to lose. If they don't even think you're good enough to be a starting quarterback on a team that's 0-8, you must really suck. So naturally, I was like, oh cool, I'll continue to, you know, work on my skill. A lot of it was even going into my second year in high school. There were workouts in the morning at 6 a.m. before school. And I was like, okay, I can get up at 6 a.m. and I can go do these rope drills where you'd run through the ropes. You see a lot of people do that. There were these hills that we would run up. And there was probably less than 10 people there, but I was probably one of the three that were there almost every single day to try to continue to push myself to grow in these maybe physical areas that I was really behind a lot of other people at. And I went in there, competed really hard my third year, and I lost the starting job to Brian Greasy. So I go into my fourth year and I was like, now's my time. I worked hard to compete my first three years. Going into my fourth year, I got a great opportunity to play. And they recruited a kid named Drew Henson. And I was like, the competition's relentless. At first, I was looking at the guys ahead of me. Now I got to be looking down at the guys behind me too? And going into my fourth year, my teammates named me team captain. And I won the starting job. We had a good year. We finished 10 and 3. You know, beat everyone out. And then I showed up and Coach Carr says, well, you're going to compete with Drew Henson to be the starter going into your fifth year. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. You want me to compete? That's what we're going to do. I competed really hard again in my fifth year. Took it to a new level. Thought about my conditioning, my strength. Thought about how I was making my decisions off the field. I was starting to play really good. And I thought, you know, I'm going to have a chance. Coach Carr called me and he said, well, Tom, this is what we're going to do. You're going to start. Drew, you're going to play the second quarter. And I'm going to decide at halftime who plays the rest of the year. Coach Carr said, the platoon's off. Tom's playing the rest of the year. We didn't lose a game the rest of the season. It was a tough battle for me. It was a tough go. It was tough in high school. It was really tough in college. So, of course, now I'm going to the NFL Draft. And I'm like, all these pro coaches must have seen how good I was. Man, I'm going to be a second round pick. Round one, two, and here we go. Sixth round, pick 199. And I was like, all right, I'm going to make all those other teams pay. Like I said, I wasn't the prodigy. I learned about work ethic. I learned about resilience. I learned about gaining the trust and the respect of my teammates and coaches to name me captain. I learned about how to dig deep within myself a long way from home without a ton of support. I was so motivated to be the best I could be that it wasn't I wasn't motivated to be the starter. I wasn't motivated to win the Super Bowl. I just was motivated to give my best, do the best with the opportunity I got and to never let my teammates down. All those experiences that we think are the hardest things in our life end up being the best experience in our life because if you approach it with humility and you look inward, they become the best opportunities for growth and learning. Most people could say, man, I want to exercise for one day. I want to be more hydrated for one day. Well, can you do it for a week? Well, that's more discipline, right? Can you do it for a month? That's more discipline. Can you do it for a year? That's even more discipline. How disciplined are you to maintain that routine over a period of time? And I think that will determine your level of success. Fame didn't motivate me. I didn't give a **** about any of it. I always took less money because I wanted a good team around me. I didn't care about going to all these different places and doing those things. I just wanted to be my best. I wanted to go out there and the team believed in me. I didn't want to let them down. If I want to be the best, I got to beat the best. For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov