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Lions punter Sam Martin spent a couple weeks visiting troops in the Middle East this offseason.
(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)
ALLEN PARK -- Punters are people too.
And Sam Martin is one of the more popular people in the Detroit Lions locker room.
He's flashed a pretty big leg, too, since the Detroit Lions took him in the fifth round of the 2015 draft, He's averaged at least 46 yards per punt in each of his first two seasons, and at least 40 yards net punting.
With the home opener on deck Sunday, Martin is next in our weekly Q&A series:
MLive: What's the biggest misconception fans have about what life in the NFL is like?
Sam Martin: I'd say the appearance of the life is a lot more glamorous than what it really is. Like, it's not like we just show up and play on Sunday and then make a ton of money. I guess I don't know how else to put it.
MLive: It's funny, I ask this question a lot because I'm interested in how you guys think you are perceived and that kind of thing, and I get something like that like 90 percent of the time.
Martin: Yeah, I mean, it's a really good job, but it's still a job and a ton of work. And not everyone makes Calvin money.
MLive: Especially punters.
Martin: ...
MLive: What was the first concert you ever went to?
Martin: N'Sync.
MLive: Yeah?
Martin: Yeah.
MLive: When? Where?
Martin: It was elementary school in Atlanta. I don't know how old I was, but it was when they were big, so I'm guessing elementary school sometime. It was with a group of my friends and our moms.
MLive: You a big fan back in the day?
Martin: Oh yeah, man. 'Bye Bye Bye' was a favorite for sure.
MLive: Did you ever have any, like, regular-person jobs back in the day?
Martin: I've had a lot of jobs, actually. I worked at Pizza Hut, I've worked at a country club as a server. I've done landscaping work. I worked for a catering company doing weddings. My favorite one was I was a white-water rapids guide. That was in college -- it was pretty cool.
MLive: What was the worst of those jobs?
Martin: Probably Pizza Hut, because I always had to work on holidays and the Super Bowl, and pretty much any time people are ordering a lot of pizzas. It was only for a few months, but ...
MLive: Was this in high school?
Martin: No, this was for an offseason in college. Freshman or sophomore year I think. I applied to a bunch of places, and they were the first to get back to me. I needed the money, so I did it.
MLive: Were you cookin' pizzas or answering phones or what?
Martin: I was making pizzas. I considered myself a pizza artist when I was there. I didn't work at Pizza Hut, I was a pizza artist.
MLive: If you could line up against any of the presidential candidates, who would it be?
Martin: I want to say Trump, just because it'd be entertaining to watch him play football. Chris Christie would probably be a pretty good lineman.
MLive: Who's the toughest teammate you've ever had?
Martin: (Quarterback) Matthew Stafford's pretty tough, as far as always getting beat up and he somehow always plays. (Former center Dominic) Raiola was pretty tough. I'd say Raiola in the sense of he was always getting beat up (health-wise) a lot, and he was kind of scary on the field.
MLive: Do you have any tough-guy stories about Raiola? Dude was definitely tough.
Martin: Not more than what everyone already probably knows, with all of his antics and stuff like that. The stuff he would get in trouble for, like retaliation and that kind of thing.
MLive: 5 greatest punters of all time?
Martin: Ray Guy, Thomas Morstead, Pat McAfee, Shane Lechler ... hey Mule, who else?
Don Muhlbach: Yale Lary.
Martin: Who's he?
Muhlbach: Hall-of-Famer. Detroit Lion. No big deal.
MLive: What do you do in your free time?
Martin: Not much, man. I'm pretty low-key. I golf. I try to travel a little bit. I went to California this offseason. I went to the Bahamas for 10 days. I went to Bahrain on a Middle East trip for two weeks.
MLive: Bahrain? For what?
Martin: It was a USO thing.
MLive: What was it like?
Martin: It was not what I expected. Like, it was more Americanized than I thought. I mean, right across the bridge is Saudi Arabia, which is real uptight. And Bahrain was pretty laid-back. There were restaurants and clubs and shopping malls and stuff like that. So that was a surprise. Like, I was actually kind of nervous going over there at first, but then once we got there, it was actually pretty nice.
MLive: Where'd you stay? In a hotel or what?
Martin: We stayed one night on an aircraft carrier, and most of the time in a hotel, and then a couple nights on the base.
MLive: What was staying on an aircraft carrier like?
Martin: Sick, man. It was real loud, so you don't get much sleep. But it was a really cool experience.
MLive: Did you land on it on a plane? Or was it docked somewhere?
Martin: Yeah, we landed on it. It was in the middle of the Persian Gulf, like 50 miles out, so we had to take a plane out. That was really cool, because you sit backwards in those planes. For takeoffs and landings, it's easier I guess. We flew around on a helicopter too, and went off to a battleship for the day. It was sick.
MLive: I bet the G-forces were pretty intense.
Martin: More so when you're taking off. It's like a roller-coaster, dude. It throws you forward real hard. Landing was sort of the same thing, I guess. It was pretty hard, but it happened so quick. Like, you land down, and then you just stop.
MLive: So what did you do while you were there?
Martin: We just visited anywhere and everywhere. We visited the SEALs and the marines and the air force and a missile site they have out there. Did some signings and appearance stuff. Then we had a couple days off and went to like a little Chinatown -- like a market and had some crazy food and stuff like that.