 All right, boy, thanks so much for joining us here. Look, you're just stepping off the practice field right now. We still see the sweat coming down your face. So, you know, on that note, you know, you've always seen the risen, you know, to rise to the occasion, right? You know, no matter what the challenges is, the challenges have been in front of you. So let's go back. How did you get into football growing up in St. Louis, my hometown as well? Like how did all that start? Football, so my parents were Nigerian, immigrated over, big on soccer. So we, me and my brother played soccer very competitively ever since we were little. And so when I went to school, I eventually went to school out in the county, Ladoo area, and one of the kids, you know, saw I was really athletic and said, you know, I have this guy, you know, if you want to go, I play basketball. It's like, if you want to play, you know, for this team that's traveling and stuff, you should meet this guy. So I drive over to his house and we still have a great connection now. He's my financial advisor, Bandy Palin. And you know, he takes a look at me, he takes him, he has a basketball court in his house. I shoot a couple of shots and he's talking to my dad and stuff. And you know, we all make a great impression on him and he lets me join the team. And two years after that, he's joining or making a football team. And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, I'm really good at soccer, traveling around the country. I didn't want to play football at the time, but said, you know, I'll give it a chance. All my friends from the basketball team were playing. I'll go give it a chance, play football. And it's always fun at recess, recess too. So that first year I played, I think my first run, I was running back in the day, I was a lot smaller, broke a long run, like 60 yards on a 29 tall sweep. I remember the exact play. I came across, ran down the right sideline and I really fell in love with the game then. But even then, growing up, it was still like, it was my third sport, technically. I played, you know, soccer first, basketball, baseball and football. So football was my third sport and then mixed with the academics and mixed with the other sports I was playing. I had to quit because I didn't really have time for it. But then high school came around and it was time to choose between soccer and football. I kind of got burnt out from soccer and I've been playing so much as a kid and then my brother had chose the football route that I just went and chose the football route as well, trying to start that up again. I mean, so how did you get to Yale? So going to Burroughs, you get a lot of good connections and they kind of put kids in the Ivy League that way. My dad always wanted to, my mom too, they said we're gonna raise some of the most hardworking kids and some of the most intelligent kids. They had that written on our whiteboard in our house. And so every week when we got home, we had a meeting about how we can better ourselves in the classroom and life, all this stuff. My dad worked at a town, so it was like only family towns when we got home in the weekends. We have like a three hour long meeting on how we will be able to better ourselves growing up in life lessons and stuff. And so early, even in fifth grade, he's like, you know, I'm shooting for you guys to go to like the best schools around the nation. And obviously the Ivy League was in his dreams. So it kind of became my dream because I thought, you know what, I wanna be successful. And then also kind of growing a school out of where I lived over there in the more affluent counties. You know, you kind of learned that, you know, these guys got a lot of good stuff. So in order to get that good stuff, and I was taught that academics was the way to kind of better your life to get that cool stuff. So that was kind of my goal as soon as football, I realized it could be an option for me because my high school coach, coach and NFL, Gus Ferrat, he told me, you know, whatever school you wanna go to, I feel like you got a chance to just take this football more seriously or schools you wanna go to. And I was like, oh, Ivy League, like that's where I'm trying to go. So he sent my tape out to them and they got back to me with Dan a couple of weeks because of his word and what he's done in his career and stuff. They weren't recruiting me until he sent the tape out. And then they kind of all got back to me and I had offers from basically all of them then a couple of weeks. And then I got to basically choose whichever one I wanted to go to. Well, that's fantastic. You said something that seems very applicable to what you do in the NFL. And that is every weekend, your family would have meetings. You said they would have stuff on a chalkboard or whiteboard and how you can be better and goals and things like that. Did you understand when you were younger exactly why your parents were putting you through that? You know, as a kid, you're never gonna know. I wanted to go out and play basketball. I wanted to go out and play with my friends or just go watch TV or something. But definitely grateful for that. Cause also one thing that kids are not getting anymore, like your attention span is goes out the window nowadays. Like TV shows are only 15 minutes long now. We're cutting out ads and all this stuff. Everybody's on their phones, six second videos on TikTok, you know what I'm saying? So sitting through a three hour long meeting with your parents where you can't look at anything but your parents on the whiteboard. That's definitely also teaching you something on one respect and being there and meetings and stuff and just being able to pay attention and try to really be involved in everything that's going on. But I think it definitely taught me a lot cause you don't really know that you're getting all these life lessons until lessons hit you in the face. And then you're like, oh, I learned about that when I was a kid or oh, this is what my dad was talking about when I was younger and you kind of just are very thankful that you have parents there and they really gave their everything for me and my brother to grow up in. Everything was dedicated to us after we were born. So very thankful for that. This is a great jumping off point cause you talk about all the education at home, at school, you know, John Burroughs at Yale. So we're just come off a period of summer Memorial Day, right? We all grew up understanding what Memorial Day was, but we're also in the realm too, where the Tulsa race massacre or Juneteenth, of course, Juneteenth where slaves in Texas were notified of their liberation two years after the emancipation, proclamation by Abraham Lincoln freed the enslaved. Did you learn about like, I didn't learn about Juneteen or Tulsa race massacre a couple of years ago? Yeah, I didn't learn about that in high school. I think we did have a class though, we had AFAM. So I think they would have learned about, I did not choose that elective. When you were in college? Hmm, I was high school, John. High school? So it's a very progressive school. I'm sure they learned about that in AFAM, but it's not something that I, I think it was my senior year, it was only a trimester long. So it's not something that was really focused on. You had to choose it as an elective, but I'm sure they learned about it there. But even then I think that, especially if a progressive school like John Burr, I don't know why that's not in the curriculum, especially now that I know more and more about that stuff. I don't even know how much my parents knew about it when they immigrated here. Obviously they're not from, or I'm born here, but I feel like they were very much be a part of, you know, African history. They should, that should be taught in schools since you're in kindergarten. And I think the more you kind of learn about history, you can't, you shouldn't erase it. It should be there in textbooks. It should be there to learn from and understand where we might have been wrong and hold us accountable as a country. But really that's all I have on. I think that we should just be more aware of it and kind of learn from it. What about the progressive learning? I mean, it seems to your generation, I'm more than twice your age. You guys seem to be learning and you talk about being progressive that the high school you went to, but learning more and more about things that we, that I never would, I was never taught about the Tulsa Race Massacre or things like this. What about being in this period where you're being educated and being enlightened where you can share with a younger generation who still might not be taught about that in their school curriculum? I think it's very important now. I think that's how change is made. Basically, stories being passed down, it wasn't passed down to us. So now that it is being shown, a lot of times on social media is where we unfortunately learn all of our stuff. But, we then we kind of dig deeper into it. Now we kind of have our own information on it, our own thoughts and stuff on it. Then we can pass it down to our kids now that they're growing up with this information and kind of learning how to internally accept it or kind of learn from it so that we can understand each other's differences and really kind of coincide as a nation. I think that at first, when you first learn about it, it's gonna be shocking to people who, you kind of say, oh, you got your ancestors, it's gonna be polarizing a little bit. But I think when you've accepted and trying to learn from it and come together as one, then it's very useful. Now, you've met all kinds of challenges, whether in life, athletics, is there something right now outside of football where you're saying, okay, this is the goal or this is something I wanna do next outside of sports? Outside of sports, ooh. I wanna help, people helped me growing up. I don't think I would have been here without the help of a lot of people I went to school with, their parents, kind of reached back and saw my family, I wouldn't say struggling, but not doing as well. Definitely couldn't hand, it's not a handout. We always like to say definitely just a hand up, people who are trying to get up, kind of showing that effort, I think deserve a hand up. So there's an organization I do work with in St. Louis, Live for Life. And I think that, and they're basically, kind of giving education and sometimes shelter to these kids who are needing to go through school and definitely trying to get to the next level of trying to use their education better themselves. So when I do hit my next count, I think that's one thing that kind of motivates me is that I can help other people the same way I could be helped. All right, four way, hey man, we appreciate you taking the time. Well done, always good to chat with another fellow St. Louisian, best of luck to you. Thank you, appreciate you.