After several years in the league, when a player becomes a vested veteran in the NFL, they play under a different set of rules. For instance, if you cut a vested veteran mid-season and they don't get picked up by another team, you owe them the remainder of their salary.

I didn't play in the NFL, and I didn't play defensive line. But football, at the fundamental level, is football. It's about motivating people and getting the best out of them.

Veterans get priority in the training room and better parking, but there is not a whole lot of difference in terms of how they're treated in the competition for playing time. To me it doesn't matter if a guy is a 10-year veteran or a rookie. If the rookie is better, he finds his way onto the field.

There is a great amount of precision within each individual's technique and role in the play. When you put 22 of them out there, it can look chaotic but when you break down individual performance, it looks less so.

More often than not, you find players seeing something that they can help another player with or reinforce something the coaches are seeing. Veterans do that regularly with younger players.

When teams win and play well, everyone benefits from a financial standpoint. But everyone takes pride in people being able to achieve at that level.

I learned through apprenticeship. I was an assistant to a defensive coach, and I'm still learning.

Jobs are hard to come by, so players are extremely motivated to do whatever it takes to keep their job.