papz

Congratulations on a new deal.

“Thank you very much. I’m extremely excited to be back. That free agency process is not as much fun as it’s advertised as, especially when you have a strong desire to go to one place and kind of be in your home. I’m just glad that it worked out.”

How did you go about it? Didn’t you want to stay in New Orleans all along?

“You have to be smart about it and try you best to kind of keep a level head. As much as I did want to stay, you have to be open to the possibility that it’s not going to work out for whatever reason that is. You try to keep an open kind and go into with that mindset that it might not work. I think that’s the same way that the teams go into. Even if they want a guy, maybe it doesn’t always all come together. Try to keep a level head and yet at the same time every time we heard from somebody else I made sure to emphasize to my agent that he needed to call the Saints and make sure that they were in the loop and see if we could get something accomplished.”

That will make a lot of people happy here. Why New Orleans and why were you so passionate about trying to make this work?

“I think for me it may be a little different than those guys. I’m sure that in New Orleans now that there is a culture of winning here. That I’m sure is attractive to people outside of the building and that’s something that I think guys desire is to be on a winning team. For me even more so than that, I feel like I’ve become a part of creating that culture. I do feel invested in kind of the change that has occurred here in the last eight years. That’s important for me to be around and to continue and have the possibility of finishing my career in the place where I started had a lot to do with it. And on top of all of that, I love the guys here. I love the coaching staff. I have a personal relationship with a lot of people in this building from equipment guys to training staff to the coaching staff and certainly to my teammates. There were a lot of reasons for me that it made sense to stay and you top that all off with getting to continue living in New Orleans and all the great stuff that it provides. It was hard for me to come up with a reason to leave.”

Cincinnati was home originally, right?

“Yes”

Has New Orleans become home now?

“I think even my mother at this point would concede that New Orleans is my home, as much as it probably pains her to say. This will probably, barring an unforeseen circumstance, be the place where I spend the rest of my life. I feel like I’m a part of the community. People talk a lot about it’s the people that make New Orleans. When it’s the people that make a city, it’s hard to leave it because you can’t bring those people with you. You can go to another city that has great festivals or parties or a great atmosphere or has great food. There are other cities in the world that have those things but the people here are really unique. I don’t think that I could let that go out of my life. I think that staying here with the people that I’ve met and the friendships that I’ve built is really important to me.”

Read more: Zach Strief talks about re-signing with the New Orleans Saints

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Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

All little common sense goes a long way.