Ever wonder how one person can accomplish so much?

Vikings Legend Alan Page could fill a library with the lessons he's learned and the perspective he's gained during his career as a Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive lineman and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice.

His accomplishments alone could fill an encyclopedia.

In retirement now, the 81-year-old Page, who won the 1971 NFL MVP and became the first former professional athlete to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, answered questions, recently, from The Athletic's Elise Devlin in the first part of a "Life on the Other Side of the Game" series.

You can find the entire Q&A here, and we will provide a few of our favorite responses below.

Devlin: Professional football and a judicial career seem very different, but I'd love to know if there were core principles or skills that allowed you to achieve success in both.

Page: Different only in that they are different things, but the core underlying principles that allow for success are the same, it seems to me, no matter what the endeavor is.

It's the ability to focus on the task at hand. It's the ability to work hard, the willingness to work hard. Perseverance. Thinking through a problem, analyzing it, making a decision, and then acting on that decision.

Devlin: Your relationship with competition and success and excellence, did that change at all? Being in such a different field?

Page: No, not at all. Because for me, seeking excellence means being as good as you can be at what you're doing, not as good as your competition is, not as good as the person next to you, but fulfilling your highest potential. Whether that's on the athletic field, in the law, or just in relationships. That elevates you in ways that I think seeking excellence to be better than somebody else really just limits you to the competition.

I should note that the one thing I concluded early on is that success is not a destination. It's in some respects a man well traveled. It's the journey that's important, not the milestones along the way. Because once you reach a milestone, you're sort of saying, what was that all about?

Devlin: What does that process look like for you, to come to that kind of conclusion?

Page: It was a lot of introspection.

Even back then, before we had the internet moving us at warp speed, we as people tend to look at things and want solutions and answers. Well, I don't think it works that way.

You have to reflect. You have to think; you have to really work your way through it. And that's what it took for me: a great deal of thinking about what does all this mean.

Keith Carter: 'Luckiest guy in the world'

Since his February promotion from assistant offensive line coach to overseeing the position, Carter and his ambitious practices, where players sweat more and work harder, have been noted by every observer.

It's impossible to miss the difference in preparation, and the emphasis on conditioning and physicality.

Last week, we highlighted Kevin Seifert's story at ESPN on Carter that included takeaways from Minnesota's starting five of Christian Darrisaw, Donovan Jackson, Blake Brandel, Will Fries and Brian O'Neill. They agreed the summer has been difficult but think it will pay off tremendously. They also recognized prior criticism of Carter's methods during his stints with the Titans and Jets, but his old-school toughness is appreciated. "You might not always like it," Fries commented, "but it's good for us."

This week, Mark Craig of the Star Tribune peeled back even more layers of Carter to uncover why he's rightly equipped to help reinvent Minnesota's run game. The story begins on a lime-green Kawasaki ZX9 Ninja, in the early 2000s, when Carter, at age 20 and as UCLA's top tight end, was fighting traffic on his way home.

Here's an excerpt from Craig's profile of Carter, and the day that effectively ended his playing career:

Carter remembers being tired and thirsty back on April 3, 2003. And impatient as he entered the 405 freeway for the 6-mile trip from Spaulding Field in Westwood to his place in Palms. Traffic was slow.

"I turned to see if I could switch lanes," Carter said. "I thought I could."

The car in front came to a screeching halt. Carter tried to stop. He flew off the motorcycle. His hip and leg took the full impact of the car's left rear corner.

"I hit the ground and remember instinctively popping up to make sure I wouldn't get run over," Carter said. "Then I looked down and remember not being able to move."

His hip was dislocated. His body was pointing one way, his leg the other. He fell to the ground.

When help arrived and his adrenaline wore off, Carter remembers screaming one thing over and over as he was being loaded into the ambulance.

"Oh, my God!" he said. "My coaches are going to kill me!"

That says a lot about Carter's love of football, and how badly he didn't want to let his team down. Ultimately, his Bruins future involved fewer snaps and more surgeries. The incident — the same injury that ended Bo Jackson's career — didn't ruin his football future, though. It sparked a pivot to coaching.

Craig's feature is loaded with detail on Carter from the likes of college and NFL coaches, one childhood friend, and Vikings Head Coach Kevin O'Connell, who said Carter is "reinventing himself as the version he wants" but "he hasn't lost his identity as a really, really good O-line coach who will push these guys."

Click here to read about the coach charged with leading Minnesota's o-line.

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