Ten Questions with Browns Quarterback 
1. You were a three-year letter-winner in basketball at Rancho Cordova High School in Sacramento, Calif. Which was your first love, basketball or football and why?
"Man, probably basketball. I love basketball. I think the reason why is because you don’t have to worry about the elements, you don’t have to worry about weather. It’s less physical. Mentally, it’s a lot easier. You have to deal with a lot more games, but you don’t have to deal with the mental capacity (like) playing quarterback in this league. It’s easy to go out and work on your game, all you need is a hoop and a basketball. You could do the same thing at quarterback, but you need somebody who can catch. It’s a lot harder to do. I think that basketball was my first love."
2. Were you recruited by any colleges to play basketball and what made you choose football?
"I had a few offers, a few small schools, nothing major. I chose football because I got a scholarship out of high school to Oregon State. That trumped everything."
3. How did you develop an interest in restoring and customizing old school cars?
"I think it was a trend, especially with a lot of my friends, they have a lot of old schools. I’m not the type of person, I’m not going to lie, that is going to get underneath the hood or do work and all of that other stuff. That’s just not me; I don’t really have the patience for that stuff. I’ll try it a couple of times. I’d rather pay somebody to do it as long as they do good work. I love old school cars, but you have to keep working on them all of the time, constantly. You could fix one thing and then next thing you will have is a leak here or a screw loose here and you have to go inside the engine and do this or do that. There’s always something."
4. What quarterbacks did you look up to growing up?
"It always changes, but obviously, I was a Joe Montana fan, growing up in California and watching San Francisco play. I loved Steve Young, Randall Cunningham and one of my favorites that I just loved was Tommie Frazier when he was at Nebraska. Randall Cunningham was an African-American quarterback, he could scramble and he did a lot of different things. He was one of the guys that I looked up to when I was younger too."
5. Being new to Cleveland, what are some things Browns fans should know about you?
"I’m a very humble person, always willing to give back and every time I step out on the field, I’m going to do all I can to make the fans happy. I’m very family-oriented too."
6. What is the biggest adversity you've had to overcome?
"There’s been a whole lot, but maybe finding out my mom was sick when I was young. My mom was sick with cancer. I had just come back from Oregon State and then I had to find out my mom was sick. That was kind of a big blow for me at that young age, and I had to see if I really wanted to keep playing football."
7. What is on your iPod right now?
"I was listening to that new Eminem earlier. He isn’t on that stuff he was doing before. I like Eminem, it’s definitely acquired. You've got to really like Eminem. He and Drake, because Drake is my style of music. He can sing, he can rap, he does music and it’s kind of the total opposite of what Eminem does."
8. How have you been involved with building playgrounds for NFL Play 60 and what are some of the other charities you are involved in?
"Play 60, especially that and doing a lot of the community Gatorade camps and all of that stuff in the offseason was huge for me. The biggest program that I was involved in and still am is the O.K. Program. It was a program that I was pretty much raised in. We started at sixth grade and it went on all the way until you graduated high school. It was a program that stands for 'Our Kids' and it was really geared towards young African-Americans in the inner-cities. This program was huge; it was one of those programs where you loved to go to every weekend. It was on Saturday and it was run by the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department. Donald Northcross, who I still talk to and is like a father to me, he was the head guy along with Deputy Charles Turner. They started the program and back then, incarceration rates were high for kids going to prison and things like that. They started this program where there were four steps that you had to take and at the end of the steps, they would take you on this huge trip at the end of the year. They used to take, like 100 of us. They took us to Disneyland, we went to Magic Mountain and on the small steps, and you would go to basketball games, camping and things like that. The criteria was that you had to have good grades, your attendance had to be well and your homework had to always been turned in. There was a list that teachers had to fill out, a form saying that you hit all of those steps every semester. That’s the biggest one and I try my best to do as much as I can, but it’s always tough because we are in-season. That, doing Gatorade camps and always working with kids, seeing a smile on the faces of kids is always the best."
9. If not playing football, what would you be doing?
"That’s always a difficult question. I got my degree. I’d probably be doing something with kids, being a mentor, maybe a counselor. I have good buddies that one of them wants to be a coach, maybe get into a good program at a high school or be an athletic director or something like that. I really don’t know. It’s always tough for a lot of people. Some people have an idea of what they want to do and some people don’t. A lot of us really don’t have an idea of what we really want to do, but it’s always in the back of your mind."
10. Where do you see yourself in five years?
"Happy, hopefully playing (football still). If not, enjoying my life, having a family and doing other things that you mostly have dreamed about. Whatever God has put in my vision to accomplish, having family, healthy kids and watching them grow up."
