In My Own Words: Taking Advantage of My Opportunity

[Sourdough Sam]

But for now, we’re currently staying at the team hotel. It’s different. It definitely becomes redundant. It’s been about three months of hotel living since rookie minicamp. I don’t have a stove. I haven’t been able to make any eggs or anything so it’s been tough. But you’re in there with guys that are going through the same thing as you which helps build camaraderie and relationships.


We had our first training camp practice on Saturday. Unfortunately, we weren’t hitting yet. I’ll be honest, I was ready to start tackling right out of the gate, but obviously we can’t just yet. I had to prepare myself for that. But our first two unpadded practices gave us a couple of days to get acclimated to the weather and wearing a helmet and moving around. It was a normal practice.


I got first-team reps my first few days out at practice. Going out there with the vets, things were a lot faster than rookie camp. Rookie camp was already pretty fast for me because they had me at MIKE linebacker. I’ve never played MIKE. I’ve always been a WILL or SAM linebacker. At MIKE, you have to make the calls. During rookie camp, I was kind of confused with it all. But once OTAs came around, I had a little bit of an understanding of the plays so I felt a little more comfortable. It was fast. Tempo was fast. I just had to settle myself down and listen to the coaches and my teammates and do my job.


Transitioning to camp was a challenge. I talked to Coach DeMeco Ryans about missing home. He definitely made me feel a lot better about it. He told me that this team is now my extended family, and my teammates are my boys. Everyone's got my back. Now I've just got to get comfortable and go play football. It was reassuring to hear that.