Former LSU defensive back Tyrann Mathieu says the No. 1 thing he wants NFL teams to know about him is that he no longer considers smoking marijuana to be more fun than playing football.
Mathieu said on NFL Network that he has moved beyond the issues that got him kicked out of school and is 100 percent focused on being an NFL player.
“All the things I put before football in the past, it’s not fun anymore -- marijuana and everything you put before football is obsolete now,” Mathieu said.
After describing quitting marijuana as “a big struggle,” Mathieu said he had been getting high since a family member first gave marijuana to him at the age of 12 or 13.
Mathieu said the biggest question he heard from NFL coaches at the Scouting Combine was why he got kicked out of LSU. Mathieu added that every team already knows exactly what he did, but that he knows they wanted to see how forthright he would be.
“It probably was, ‘Why did you get kicked out of school?’ which I think they already knew but I think they want to hear you say it,” Mathieu said.
Asked what answer he gave to that question, Mathieu said, “Marijuana.”
“It’s smoking marijuana and then it’s all the things you kind of surround yourself around,” Mathieu said. “The marijuana was the issue but it was the social things, too, that I had to get in line.”
Now Mathieu just hopes some team will believe him when he says he has gotten in line.