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Jeffrey Gorman and Larra Overton sat down with Anthony Castonzo on this week's episode of the Colts Official Podcast. There's a ton of good, insightful, enjoyable conversation in the podcast, so be sure to listen to the whole thing.
A few highlights from the longtime Colts left tackle:
On Adjusting To Life After Football:
It's definitely an adjustment having free time in the afternoons. I still work out and get after it pretty good in the morning and I still kind of have my regimented meals and everything. But there's a little bit of a gap in that afternoon area where I'm like, huh, what to do, what to do? I find myself doing some crosswords or watching some TV. I like to get outside, as the weather gets nice go for a bike ride or go for a walk or something.
I've been finding things to fill my time with and it's definitely a different feeling. Although at this time of the year in the offseason it would kind of be like that anyways. I haven't really felt the full weight of it yet because that'll happen during the season when it just continues.
It's interesting just how much different the training can be too because everything that I do in training now is to make sure my body is functional and working properly. And it's not like — I guess the one thing that I have now that I never had before is just time. I don't have to be worried about, well, if I'm worried about my functionality too much then I'm worried about my ability to push weight at this level because I had to do that. I don't have to do that anymore so everything I do is just about getting my body to feel good and be able to last for the many, many years — hopefully my body doesn't start breaking down in my 50's like you hear those horror stories. That's the idea.
That is going to be the most difficult thing that I'm finding out. I'm going to have to find something competitive to get into, like very competitive, because it's that fire. I don't have the outlet for it anymore with football. Even the super hardcore training is an outlet for it. Just little things, I'll start to grit my teeth and I'll be like man, I really need to outlet this somewhere. I'm currently in the process of trying to find something athletic, competitive that I can do. Because I'm still actually rehabbing my ankle too from the surgery I had after the season.
So once I'm done with that I can get back into some competitive stuff and get that outlet. That's the one thing that I didn't expect was just how therapeutic football was for me throughout all those years. That's going to be an adjustment for sure.
On His Advice for Eric Fisher:
If I was talking to him, I'd say just focus on getting your injury right and focus on your technique and make sure when you come back you're ready to block guys across from you. Because the beautiful thing about a tackle and a quarterback's rapport is, if that tackle's blocking the guy across from him one-on-one, nothing else really matters. That's the beautiful thing. If you're locking down the defensive end, the quarterback can be doing whatever he wants back there and you're good. I think it's going to be a big thing for him focusing on himself and getting back to 100 percent and then being able to play at his highest level. And then I think Carson will get real comfortable real fast if knows his tackle is blocking the guy across from him.
On What He's Most Proud Of From His Playing Career:
The thing I'm the most proud of is when I had setbacks, whether it was something that I couldn't figure out with my technique or an injury or something like that, I'm really proud of the fact that my reaction was always to work harder and to fix it. There was never any kind of wallowing in self-pity or thinking oh, this is — I guess just my reaction to adversity is what I'm most proud of in my career, that at the end of the day my reaction was always, well, if I work harder I will be able to fix it eventually and usually that led to success.
On Frank Reich:
Coach Reich is a players coach first and foremost. He listens to the players. He asks for your opinion. If something's not working he doesn't think he has all the answers. He looks for input. He's a manager of people more than he is a dictator is, I guess, the way I would put it. And the fact that he takes the input — he's not always going to agree with what you say and he's not always going to implement it, but the fact that he takes opinions from everywhere and he tries to create the best atmosphere, and he's trying to constantly gain more knowledge. There's never a complacency with him. It's always trying to get better at what he does while trying to make people better at what they do. It's really just a good atmosphere to play in.
On Who The Next Host of "Jeopardy!" Should Be:
"There is no correct choice other than Ken Jennings. He has earned it. He is the best of all time and it's not like he's the best of all time and he's an okay host. He's really good at hosting. He's just the logical choice to take the reins in my opinion."
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There's plenty more in the episode, like a story about a raw steak, how Castonzo watches Colts games from his couch and how Aaron Rodgers did as the fill-in host of "Jeopardy!"
