Marshall: I'm Maturing Both On & Off The Field
(WSCR) If you're seeing a different Brandon Marshall in Chicago than you did in Miami and Denver, there's a reason.
Seemingly gone are Marshall's selfish antics and his run-ins with the law. Marshall, whose rap sheet was almost as full as his stat sheet, cites support from his wife, as well as his relationship with God, for the change in his ways.
But don't tell Marshall he's changed his image - the wide receiver is adamant his transformation is much deeper than that.
"I don't agree with you when you say 'image,' because a lot of times people try to do damage control," Marshall told The McNeil and Spiegel Show. "When you say, 'clean up your image,' a lot of times that's fake. It's not a transformation. It may be a change on the outside, but it's not a transformation on the inside. For me, there's so much to life. There's so much to enjoy. There's so much family and friends to enjoy. When you're not in a good place mentally, it can create a lot of chaos and leave you sometimes just really down."
LISTEN: Brandon Marshall on The McNeil and Spiegel Show
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Marshall says his maturity off the field has sparked a maturity on the field, and he's adjusted the way he approaches football.
"Five years ago, I didn't know what conference I was in, probably," Marshall said. "When you go back that far, the game was different. It was definitely different for me. I was seeing a lot of 1-on-1 coverages and we were out there just throwing it all over the place. Now, we have to be smarter. The looks that we're getting, the disguises, you have to be a student of the game. It doesn't matter how talented you are, if you're not a student of the game, you're definitely going to fail. I think the things you guys are hearing from me is just a maturity."
On the field, the Bears are 4-1, and Marshall is putting together a season Bears fans haven't seen from a wide receiver in quite some time.
"We definitely know who we are," Marshall said. "We know where we're headed, where we want to go. We know where we're not. We're excited about our position right now. We still have a bunch of games left, so we have to stay focused and continue to gel together and get better. I think we're a team that has a great defense, possibly the best defense in the business, and we have an offense that's capable of being really explosive. With a defense like that, we just need to play off each other."
For more information on Brandon's charity, Project Borderline, please click here.
