"Football has done so much for me, given me friends, family, given me life lessons that now I can use in the operating room or just as a leader."
"The fundamentals have to be emphasized: tackling the correct way. Having the right equipment. Making sure that you don't have very violent practices or contact practices."
"When I was younger, trying to afford football camps, my parents would sometimes have to miss bills. They sacrificed these things for me because they saw I had a goal."
"I'm glad that I walked into my purpose. I'm glad that I walked into something that was a smooth transition from football."
"The hospital has adjusted itself in response to Covid-19, the influx of patients. So walking into the hospital, you immediately realize that you're playing a different ballgame."
"Here at Mass General, we're one of the largest hospitals in the New England area and perhaps even the country. We're Harvard affiliated, so we have a lot of resources just at baseline."
"Yes, I understand that football and sports in America have been a way for us to get away from some of our most daunting moments. It's a way for us to bring the country together."
"Football helped me tremendously, and that's why I want the sport to stay because it's so valuable. It's helped me be a better physician today, certainly. I've learned discipline. I've learned focus, teamwork, communication."
"I feel that public service is so important and giving back, being a role model and helping people in need is something that I would love to do."
"Whether it's one play in the NFL or 1,000 plays in the NFL, your pads will come off eventually."
"I always wanted to play in the NFL. I decided to go to Florida State University as my college to play football because the coach there - Bobby Bowden - had a pedigree and acumen for putting players into the league."
"Once my junior year finished at Florida State, I won the Rhodes Scholarship and I was also projected as a second-round draft pick."
"I've wanted to do medicine actually before I started playing football."
"I went to Florida State for college. Then I went to Oxford in England for a master's degree. I was drafted by the Titans and was with them for two years, and then one year in Pittsburgh with the Steelers."
"I know that my parents are proud of me."
"I came from a prep school in New Jersey, so I get that when I got to FSU, some people weren't sure about me - I didn't play in Florida or Texas or at a powerhouse high school."
"You would think none of my brothers have jobs with how much time they spend on the phone with our mom."
"I could go to Oxford, I could immerse myself in a new culture, I could develop my intellectual capital, I could expand my network, I can travel from country to country like it's state to state, and being in that fraternity of Rhodes Scholars was just a truly special demarcation."
"Going for the Rhodes, it really put a label on me that was hard to shake, and frankly I don't think that I did shake it."
"I wanted to be completely and totally entrenched, immersed in this football life, this culture all the way, so you don't even have a thought, an inkling, that my mind is somewhere else."
"But in the NFL, you know you're not playing for the 'T' on the side of the helmet. You're not playing for the color of the Steelers. You're playing more because they're paying you to play and you have a family to take care of."
"It affected even our neurosurgical department in a way where our neurosurgical floor has now been transformed into a COVID-19 patient-only floor."
"The Rhodes scholarship process was very extensive. I had to do several personal statements, rewrite those over and over and over again. I had to get some letters of recommendation."
"You know I went to the Hunt Schools, a boarding school in Princeton, and I've heard so many Rhodes scholars have gone to the Ivys."
"As soon as I learned that I was a finalist, it was no question in my mind that I was going to put myself into the competition for the Rhodes scholarship."
