Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
Quarantine Routine is a regular feature that asks political, business, sports and entertainment power brokers how their daily lives have changed -- and how they're still doing their jobs -- during the coronavirus crisis.
Former Denver Broncos running back and Pro Football Hall of Famer Terrell Davis is finding different ways to normalize life as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has put his career and life on hold.
Davis played eight seasons with the Broncos where he won two Super Bowls and was named Super Bowl MVP in 1998. He holds 56 Broncos’ team records, including most points in a season (138), most touchdowns in a season (23) and most total yards from scrimmage (2,225). He was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017.
Davis has worked as an analyst for the NFL Network since 2009 and regularly partakes in corporate speaking engagements. He is also the co-founder of athletic performance beverage DEFY.
Daivs spoke to Fox News Wednesday to discuss how his life has changed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
CLICK HERE TO GET MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
Fox News: How has your daily routine changed since social distancing measures began?
Davis: I would only go to the NFL (Network) studio once a week and then I would travel quite a bit to do appearances and stuff like that. You know, corporate speaking engagements, so that’s obviously changed.
As far as the things I do at home, I still get up at -- I usually get up at 5 a.m., I get up a little later now. So I get up at 5:30 a.m. I like to get my workouts in before I start the day. I [used to] take the kids to school, whatever it is and then go about my day, which is a lot of phone calls, it’s a lot of studying. You know with football you’re constantly researching stuff, looking at the games, players, transactions, all that stuff. So in some ways, some of the stuff that I’ve been doing, I’m still doing, but I’m doing more of.
But it is different because the kids are home and so now it’s a lot of spending time with them and even though I have work to do and I’m trying to get ahead of a lot of stuff, they see you and it’s like “Well, OK you can’t go anywhere so let’s play all day.' So I’m spending a lot of time with kids.
I try to look at this time as a way to get ahead of everything. So I went through my files and I cleaned out all of my office files. From a business standpoint, I’m doing all this stuff -- getting ready for when life returns to normal.
Fox News: What are the biggest challenges in doing your job during this crisis?
Davis: Well the biggest challenge is that I make most of my money traveling. So if I don’t travel, I don’t make money, so that’s certainly a big challenge. But it really is the human touch, you know, the actual interactions of just being out. Whatever [it] is, we like to just be out in society and I think that’s just difficult for anybody to wrap their minds around not being able to do things as normal.
We are social creatures and we just like to be around people. That’s just hard for us to deal with. The social element to it is just very different.
Fox News: What do you miss the most about life before this began?
Davis: It just feels weird, and I’m sure everybody can relate to, just not having the simple things.
Even having our grandparents over, my kids’ grandparents. They can’t even come over so that is strange for everybody. And then if you have kids, we have three young children and people that have kids can relate -- it is difficult to tell them they can’t go anywhere and so then you’re like “What are your options?” Now they’re home, you can only get them to do so much school work and math and reading. Now it’s movies and it’s iPads and all these electronics and stuff you try to stay away from. So you’re trying to pass the time but you’re trying to make good of it.
We will never forget how strange this feels. I don’t know if we’ll be able to tell somebody about this one day when we get older. It’s so bizarre.
Fox News: What surprised you most about how your everyday life has changed?
Davis: Nobody knows (when life will return to normal) so you have to prepare your mind for ... yeah, maybe there is some semblance of normalcy but I expect this thing to linger pretty deep. It just feels like it has to, at least from the mask stand point, at least from the major gatherings, but that impacts everything we do. Our sports, that impacts still, even at work, there are certain jobs where people still have to have a large amount of people gathered and they’re not going to be able to do that so this thing is going to be -- it feels like it's going to leave a pretty big trail of destruction once it's over with and I think we’re just bracing to see how we’re going to deal with it.
I just try to stay positive … I try to do things that I can put good energy towards and not think about it.
Fox News: How do you blow off steam?
Davis: Either I’m doing exercises and then I do, which really helps, is use this ball, which basically [helps with] muscle release … I use that an hour a day. It’s not really -- I don’t really meditate, I used to, but it allows me to relax with the amount of pressure it puts on my muscles. It hurts so good, I’m telling you … you feel so good after you’ve done that.
If I’m working, you know I’m a worker bee, so if I’m working towards building a talk or in my office doing something that is positive, something that is trying to advance my talk, that’s always good.
And then, when I'm with the children, just playing with them -- playing basketball in the backyard, that’s a way to relieve the stress. There’s plenty of ways to relieve stress. We’re probably on our third puzzle now that we’ve put together and I love puzzles, so that’s been fun.
It’s been challenging but, I’ve said it before, this time I have to appreciate it because once things get back to normal, I don’t think we’re ever going to have this kind of time with our families, ever again. Just to be with them and have our kids home this amount of time, just trying to make the most of that.