COURTESY OF NEW ORLEANS SAINTS MEDIA RELATIONS DEPARTMENT
You guys are bringing back pretty much everybody on this defensive line, how nice is that? Just to have that kind of continuity just knowing the guys next to you really well. "It's great. We're all trying to carry on from last year, trying to pick up where we left off. Everybody kind of has a feel for whatever we do playing with each other for a whole year. So, like I said, we're just trying to pick it up and continue going where we were heading last year."
Is it kind of like a college atmosphere in that regard, just because you're playing next to the same guys pretty much? "You could say it like that. You come in you kind of just, you start knowing everybody and you get to know them the more and more you're around them. Being around them for year two with this team, it's a great feeling coming in locker room day one and you see everybody's faces because you know some people are coming in fresh off the street and trying to meet everybody new."
How much more comfortable do you feel on this defense, on this team, on this line, knowing the caliber of talent of the guys around you on the line? "Yeah, I feel real good. I'm just trying to take care of what I need to do. If I come in and add my one part of the 11 people that's out there, I feel like I trust all the other 10 people out there with me, being with them for a year and how they play. Just going out there, try to compete and help them in any way I can really."
Kind of also along those lines, just this depth on the defensive line on this defense, how would you describe it? Is it accurate to say it's very deep? "It is deep. We have got talent on every level, one guy goes out, another guy comes in, the talent (does not) drop off. Everybody is just in their playbooks right now trying to get better. Not about ones and twos and threes and this and that and numbers and stuff. We are just all trying to get the playbook down. Work hard, go out there, compete every day, get better every day, trying to try to get to that one goal that everybody has in mind."
As somebody who had been in the league for a couple years before getting here what was it like getting to know Cameron Jordan personally after just kind of knowing him by reputation? How different was that I guess? "Not very much different. The first thing you hear about Cam is the guy's always a little jitterbug and meeting him for the first time and being around him in the locker room for a year everything I'd heard was definitely true. He keeps the energy high. He's always going around. He's a good team leader. He's a good player. He's a good man. He's a good person and I'm glad to have a team captain like that, a friend, a teammate like that, too. He brings a lot of energy. Those times when I am tired, I'm at practice just trying to dig down deep and I look at him he's over all smiles, giggles, playing around. He picks up my energy. Every time I look at him, I tell him every day on the field, 'I need you because you get me through these hard days.'"
How has your fellow Longhorn Malcolm Roach been doing this training camp? Have you taken him under your wing? "We're together every day during camp. We spend long hours together outside the meeting room. We're always talking about things as far as getting the playbook down and what the techniques are supposed to be here and there and what can I do better here and there and vice versa. He might help me on something. I know I'm a little older and everything, but you don't always have it in this league and you can always learn so vice versa. Things that he does well I try pick up on, the things I do well he tries to pick up on. We've just tried to help each other in that regard throughout this whole camp, we're still going."
What was it like to be in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome for the first time and knowing that this is kind of the new normal, there's not going to be fans, at least for the first game. Were you able to kind of just get a grasp of what the seasons going to be like by being there? "I don't think you'll really be able to get a grasp into you're in there on that first Sunday and actually get to fill everything with the other team being there. It's all fine. We go to practice every day with no fans. So going to the dome and being in there with no fans, it's kind of surreal. You look around and you always imagined it with the fans being there, how cool it will be and how everybody will be hollering and hype and stuff for us. But, you can't really picture it without fans in the game atmosphere. It will be kind of interesting to see that on that first Sunday when we play the Bucs."