“I just really stayed in my circle,” Stroud said. “I mean, if it wasn’t God, my family or my teammates or my coaches saying anything, it really didn’t bother me. 'Cause at the end of the day, only we know what we go through every day. Only we know what the real feeling is of waking up and having to grind to get the win and then doing it again the next week. When it came to that I just really leaned on my brothers, leaned on my family and then just prayed about it. So that’s how I kept my peace and kept my joy and I just kept going. I mean, that’s the thing about life is just perseverance. The more you can persevere through your problems, I feel like the better. So that’s really all I had to do, was just lean on them.”
“One of the main things that I always tell myself is to control the controllables and the ones that you can’t control, just let God handle it,” Stroud said. “I’m not going to wake up and look at my phone everyday and see all the negativity or the positivity because at the end of the day that stuff doesn’t matter. I’m on this earth to praise God’s name and inspire others, so that’s my job. Of course, playing football with it, so when it comes to that I just have to stay focused with that and not worry about what anybody else has to say.”
