A great deal of it is mental, the ability to learn within the game, to perform at a high level - often with injury - and to weather the ups and downs of an emotional game through a 16-game season. Also, there is the willingness to prepare in the offseason, the film room, to learn the scheme and execute without a lot of repetition - that's football character.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.