Jacksonville RB Maurice Jones-Drew is entering his third season in the NFL. A week before the Jaguars' 2008 training camp opened, he sat down with NFL.com to talk about his fantasy football team, his perfect day off and the comments he'd like to put in the suggestion box outside Commissioner Goodell's office.
1. Training camp is coming up. What's the best training camp prank you've witnessed?
There really aren't that many pranksters in our training camp. They do like to powder people. They put baby powder on their hands and they walk by and they slap people with it. They do it at the last minute too -- like two minutes before meetings. You'll be walking on in and somebody will just powder you. If you come in the locker room, everybody's eligible: media people, front office ...
2. What's your least favorite part of training camp?
The meetings. The meetings are the worst thing on the planet. You get there when the sun is not out yet and then you come back when the sun's gone down. So you don't see the sun unless you're out at practice. And then you're sitting in meetings until 10 o'clock at night after running two-a-days. It's tough. It's pretty tough.
3. What did you do in the offseason?
I didn't do too much. I went to the Pro Bowl to see Fred (Taylor). Went to the Super Bowl. I stayed at home. I had a son in June. And trained. That's all I do is train, so it's kind of a boring lifestyle. I love it though. I play video games -- I'm working on my Xbox game but on PlayStation I'm a top-of-the-line Madden player. By far. I'm a Wii guy too right now -- I'm on Mario Kart on the Wii -- I'm a beast-- unstoppable. Oh, and I golf. I golf a lot, so I have a pretty busy schedule as you can see.
4. Complete this sentence: "If I were commissioner for the day, I would ..."
I'd give Maurice Jones-Drew all the money. Why not? He's a good guy. No, I think if I was Roger Goodell for a day, you know I'd sit down and listen to the players. I guess he's come out and said he's an owner's commissioner, but without the players there wouldn't be an NFL, regardless of the owners, regardless of whoever. If you have the No. 12 jersey from the Patriots and it doesn't say Tom Brady on the back, who is going to buy it? So I'd try to sit down with some of the head players of each team, and see how it is from their point of view.
I would sit down and listen to what they have to say, like how they feel about certain issues in the NFL and stuff like that. And try to just get some feedback. You don't actually have to use it but it gives you a better point of view of how the players see things like in certain situations, you know the conduct policy. It's crazy because there are 1,800 players in the league and only five are getting in trouble, but you never hear about none of the good things about guys having camps. You rarely hear about these good things, but you always hear about the five guys that stay in trouble. And that's too bad, because there's more to the league than that. It's not like people are going to stop watching NFL Total Access if all you do is talk about good. They're going to watch it anyway, because they love football. So if you talked about good the rest of the time and really didn't shine too much light on the bad stuff, you never know what might happen. You might change the world.
5. What NFL rule would you want to see changed?
The celebration rule. What is that all about? Jeez Louise. I get fined every year for a celebration. It's horrible. I thought the NFL was the highest level of football and you are supposed to be able to have fun. You know, it's so hard to get into the end zone week after week and to get in it's like you're so excited you feel like you're on top of the world. Yet, you can't use props, you can't be creative. We're entertainers. And that's what I think people need to understand. I think they're trying to turn it into too much of a business on Sundays. I mean it's a business Monday through Saturday, that should be fine but on Sundays you should let us play the game how it's supposed to be played. You have fun. You celebrate. That's the reason people buy tickets, that's the reason people wear No. 32 jerseys or No. 12 jerseys or whatever.
It doesn't matter, because you are entertaining them and they want to be entertained. So that's what I do. That's my job. I'm going to go out there and celebrate and have the best of times. And a lot of people aren't going to like me after -- on the other team, obviously -- not the fans. I go out, I play hard and I have fun.
6. Do you play fantasy football?
Actually I do. I'm in a league right now-- the NFL Players one. I'm Team 92Feezz.
6 ½. Who did you draft No. 1?
I had no choice. I took a lot of consideration into this pick -- I had my scouts on the phone the whole time and we definitely went and got this guy, he's a small-time kid out of UCLA. Great kid. Great kid. It was a franchise decision. We were either going to get him or we weren't. So we ended up taking Maurice Jones-Drew. We built our team around him. We also have Matt Forte, hopefully he comes through. Our team is based on ability and we have a lot of potential right now and hopefully the guys come in and step up.
I have Matt Hasselbeck at quarterback; I have Donovan McNabb -- I tried to get David (Garrard) but I messed up my draft, but it ended up coming out well. At receiver I have the two-headed monster from Cincinnati; I have Jerry Porter; At tight end I have Dallas Clark. Running backs I have are myself, Willis McGahee -- the teams that run the ball -- that's how I picked my running backs. So Chicago, Jacksonville, Baltimore. The reason I picked Baltimore is because they don't really have a proven quarterback, so they've got to run the ball. That's a no brainer. Same thing with Chicago -- they have to run the ball. And that's what we (Jaguars) do. We run the ball.
Then at quarterback I picked teams that throw the ball, like Seattle throws the ball a lot and now they don't even have Shaun Alexander so they're going to throw it even more. The Eagles just launch the ball, so Donovan McNabb can dump it off to Westbrook and make me points all day. Dallas Clark -- 11,12 touchdowns a year; Jacksonville's defense -- we're pretty much unstoppable.
Then I went and got Mason Crosby from the Packers. The reason I got him is because Aaron Rodgers is a great quarterback, he's a really good friend of mine, but the first couple of weeks he's going to have to get into the groove a little bit and Mason Crosby can kick 60-yard field goals.
7. What do you think of the Favre situation?
It's kind of messed up what he's doing, you know, to Aaron. You see that but, it's a business, you know, and he probably still feels like he can play. But the Packers know Favre has like one or two years left and they've invested so much money into Aaron, they want to see what Aaron can do. It's pretty tough, man, It's tough on Aaron because, you know, the guy's been sitting behind waiting for him to get his chance. He finally gets it and then all of the sudden you want to pop back up. And now it's like, "Aaron Rodgers isn't this ..." you know, and it's pretty bad. It's tough on the guy but he's keeping his head up and he's doing the right things. You know he's definitely going to come out and prove some people wrong. He's a Pac-10 guy, you know, a Bay-area guy, so you gotta show him some love until he plays us. Then I hope he throws like eight picks.
8. What is your favorite sport other than football?
I'm really into soccer. I like Brazil and watching the World Cup -- I'm going to hit one of those before I'm done. In 2010, I'm going to try to head down to South Africa and check that out. It will be fun.
9. What's a perfect day off for you?
Sleep until about 7 a.m., golf until about 11, go back home, chill with my (son) and my two dogs, sleep some more. Sleep a little more. Now if you had said my perfect trip, that would be something totally different.
9½. Where would you go?
Brazil.
9 ¾. Have you been there before?
Nope. I'm going next year. I haven't been out of the country before. I've been to Hawaii five or six times, but I want to see what it's like (Brazil). I like to travel a little bit. I've been to all 50 states.
10. What was your most memorable "Welcome to the NFL" moment?
I haven't arrived, but the closest experience I've had in the NFL was the first time I scored. I caught a little pass from David Garrard and shook a couple of people running through the middle of the field, kind of gave them a little shimmy-shake, cut back and kind-of like high-stepped it into the end zone. And when I scored I had told my agent that I was going to show my Superman shirt that I wear under all my pads. He's like, "Do that. That's nice. I like it. Do it." So sure enough I do it -- first week of preseason -- and the next thing I know I get a fine -- $10,000. Welcome to the NFL -- take away all the fun. But it's all right. I still get fined, though. It's all right. That was the worst fine. My last one I did like a little ATM thing in Kansas City. I scored and pulled out my wallet and swiped my card and did all that good stuff and I got fined for that pretty good. And then I was like, It's O.K. I took enough money out of the ATM to pay for it. It's all good.
