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I'm one of the guys that thinks you have to spend a lot of time at whatever your craft is in order to sustain it, and in order to get better at it.
You always want that as a player, to have that guy on the other side of you that's equally as talented and can make plays. It fuels you a little bit.
You become a family when you're on a football team. It's the ultimate team sport, so you have no choice but to feel like family, and that never leaves you.
People told me all of the time, 'You could be such a big star if you just talked about yourself more,' but I'm not good at that. It's always been about team.
Months after I retired, the Kings won the Stanley Cup and I was there for that game... I happened to be there with a buddy of mine and I was like, 'Oh, I miss this.'
In great Al Davis fashion, he took a reach that he believed in and instilled confidence in me like nobody else could. I was able to become all that he expected of me.
I talked to a lot of people that switched careers. Not necessarily to acting, but switched jobs. The 'becoming a student again' is the thing that always kept coming up.
When you go into free agency and have options, any team is up for you to be on - and the Raiders, obviously with me having been there for so long, have a great shot at it.
I know so many people who've been through situations where they've gone from one career to another and have had such a tough time because they didn't have any support doing it.
In high school, my dream was to go to the NBA. But when recruiting came around, the letters for football compared to basketball were like 25 to one, and my one wasn't from Duke.
I'll be relentless in my efforts to be great, but I'm realistic. I know I can't be perfect because I've seen it. But at the same time, nobody wants to fail, nobody wants to fail.
From what I came from, all the negative criticism - that keeps me from embracing that title of being the best. Because I always feel like there is another level I have to get to.
It can be a bit sententious in the Nigerian household, to the point where you feel like with any wrong step you've set yourself back so far. It's like everything has to be done right.
My position in football was cornerback, and what your job is as a cornerback is to read the person that's in front of you - read their body language and anticipate what's going to happen next.
I know that a lot of times when a guy is making a lot of money and he's not playing up to that caliber, it's like he's just getting his paycheck. That's never been me. That's never, ever been me.
Doing interviews after a game, you can't give your true emotions. You can't tap into them. So when you do that for so long, you go into acting and it can be difficult to suddenly just be open and vulnerable.
Obviously, teams are passing a lot more, and there are rules that... allow the offense to be more explosive, so you want to have as many defensive players and defensive playmakers and defensive backs that you can.
I remember players talking to Willie Brown in my presence. Receivers asking, 'Is this who you drafted? I can't believe this is who you drafted.' I was hearing it from my defensive backs: 'Man, you got a long way to go.'
You kind of have to be secretive about what you're doing post-football because if you're really outward and everyone knows about it while you're playing football then the rap on you is, 'Oh, you don't care about the game.'
As far as acting, I just went in and just started training. It was the first thing I did right when I retired. I just went in and found class, and found people, found the right coaches that could sort of just train me along.
Luckily enough for me I reached a level in the game where no one questioned my work ethic or my ability and then I was like, I don't care. Every off-season I might do a scene in a TV show or something just to keep that going.
I'm always willing to help out when people have stories and they bring them to me. I also like the completely fun films like 'Patti Cake$.' My taste is, if it feels like it's something I'd like to see, then I'll get behind it.
You're seen a certain way in the acting world. To them, you're still a football player and not taken as seriously. They think you're just doing it to be a celebrity, to keep your name out there. They don't think you'll prepare.
When guys get to a certain age or certain level in their career maybe they don't do as much or work as hard so they start to lose some of that stuff. It's inevitable that at some point your going to lose most of what you've had.
The beauty of football is you have to perform through ups and downs in a public form with a team and the discipline and the pushing through it and the preparation that it takes to be great - all of those things have served me well.
Ultimately, the Niners just felt at the end of the day like the right place to be. I was really impressed with the way they run their organization, impressed with the winning, impressed with coaches and players. Everything felt like it was in line.
Something clicked, and I was like, 'I gotta be prepared. This could end at any time.' That was my second year in the league. From that point on I started doing broadcasting and things like that in an attempt to find my passion - something I could do after football.
Oh man, you miss it so much when you finish playing, especially when you play for most of your life. You miss just being a part of a team and being a part of the guys. So I definitely think producing brought that back for me. A bunch of people working together for a common goal.
I come from a performing family. My parents are Nigerian, and their parents and their parents - and it's all about performance in their culture, you know. The music. The dancing... you're told to stand out at family gatherings and perform in some sort of way. You're just kind of born into it.
When football is your job, a lot of what you feel about yourself and about life can become attached to the outcome of those games. That's probably true about a lot of jobs, but we suffer our losses pretty publicly. When you're not getting the results you want, it becomes easy to get depressed.
If we're in a scene together, I want to give you something that allows your performance to be truthful. In football, if you're opposite me, I want to destroy you, take your head off. I'm still reading body language, still reacting, still trusting my instincts - same as football - but it's different now.
I was maybe halfway through my career, and I was shooting a Nike commercial, and the director came to the trailer and said, 'Hey man, you're really gifted at this. I get a lot of athletes that come in, but you were prepared, and you made everything seem very natural. I really think you should look into this.'
I get friends that ask that all the time, and I remember my mother asking me a couple of times, because there was no action during a game, 'did you play?' It's so weird. Everybody's like, 'Great game, great game.' And because I demand so much of myself, I'm like, 'Well, I didn't do that great, because I didn't have any stats.'
There are a handful of guys that are really good at what they're doing from the receiver position, which is the easiest position in the NFL. There are a handful of guys that are good at it. There's not one particular guy that would concern me when I'm going into a game, but there are guys that you have to take notice of in the league.
When I hear about a player losing his money, I'll rarely, if ever, point a finger at the player because I know how difficult it is. It's not always, 'Look at this idiot who got paid all these millions of dollars and lost it all.' It may be more like, 'This naive kid with a million things going on in his life put his faith in the wrong people.'