Legends Series: Former A&M defensive lineman Brandon Mitchell

Key notes from Brandon Mitchell interview

• Right now I’m teaching a class to inmates who have abused drugs and alcohol, teaching them some insight on that. Just doing these interventions for people and taking care of my old, beat up body. It’s so rewarding for me because I was that guy who was living his dream, and I still wasn’t happy enough. I didn’t understand that until I got therapy that drugs and alcohol weren’t my problem, but it became the solution to my problem.
  
  
• In college everyone drinks and has fun with their friends, but I wasn’t that bad then. It really took a toll once I got to the NFL. I was making money and was alone. Once football was gone is when it really got bad. That’s what I turned to to make me feel good about myself.
  
  
• I remember Mike Sherman coming down with Bill Johnson, and they watched me throwing shot-put inside and I showed them my explosiveness. I was able to jump up and grab a pole that was way up in the air and made coach Johnson say, "Wow! I can do something with that talent." I later threw the shot-put that hit the top of the gym, and they offered me. Coach Sherman held that scholarship for me even though they only had eight scholarships to give that year.
  
  
• That play was one of the defining moments of my career – recovering that fumble against Texas after Antonio Armstrong got the sack. I just caught the ball and ran for the end zone. It was a wonderful defining moment for me because it came against Texas. The guys on the team laughed at me, saying, ‘It really took you a long time to reach the goal line.’
  
  
• It was a huge game for us against Texas in ’94. Coach Johnson always reminded us that it was on our guys up front to make plays, saying, "Big dogs need to eat." Coach Tuberville did a really great job that year coming in and letting us use our speed on the defensive line. We didn’t call ourselves defensive lineman. We used to call ourselves big linebackers.
  
  
• Getting to the Super Bowl, it was a wonderful feeling to be a part of that team, but with me being an addict, my mind wasn’t fully on the game, my mind was on after the game. It wasn’t on enjoying that feeling of winning the championship. It was how I was going to spend that night. Every time I look down at my ring, it takes me back to where the drugs and alcohol took me. For me, I didn’t have any emotions to the moment, because my mind was somewhere else.
  
  
• Whenever I finished playing and had my problems, the guys who took care of me were my Aggie teammates who where there when I took my visit to Texas A&M. They would always answer my phone calls and be around me when others didn’t want to be. Guys like Eddie Jasper – he drove all the way down to see me because he didn’t want to talk to me on the phone. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t lying.Those guys are like family to me. I lost it all and was basically homeless at one point, and those guys helped me get my life back on track.