Ten(ish) Questions With … is a weekly series where we chat with a Detroit Lions player or coach about whatever. Sometimes it’ll be football related. Sometimes, it’ll be about their dogs or something completely different. Want to hear from a particular subject, send an email to Michael.rothstein@espn.com.

Previous Ten(ish) Questions: James Ihedigbo; Jerome Couplin

ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Golden Tate was the biggest signing in the offseason for Detroit, giving the Lions a true No. 2 receiver with good hands, good speed and the ability to draw defenses away.

There’s more to Tate than just football, though, as we chatted with him about what he’s learned, how he’s matured and how he’s perceived in this week’s Ten(ish) Questions With…

What is different between college you and you now?

Golden Tate: Mentally, I matured a lot. I think I learned not to take this game for granted. In college, I was so athletic that I could kind of just get by by my athleticism. I just matured more, man. Take care of my body. Do all the little things that give me an advantage in this league. You have to find every little legal advantage you can find.

Not football, but what’s the philosophy you live your life by?

Tate: Just really only worry about what you can control. If you can’t control it, then don’t even stress about it. God will work it out some way or another. He has a plan for everyone in everything you do.

How did you come to that? Get to that?

Tate: Just living life every day. At some point you just kind of take a moment to step back and just think about how did you get to where you were. What happened to form who you are. Some is good. Some is bad and just realized, hey, control what I can control. Don’t let outside stuff stress you out.

Finish this sentence for me: The thing that scares me the most is…

Tate: The thing that scares me the most is, in football or in life? (In life) Just losing my family or being diagnosed with a deadly disease that I really can’t help that I got or I can’t get rid or catch it too late.

Why those two things?

Tate: That’s something I can’t control. Some of these diseases I can control getting or not, but a couple of them are deadly, such as cancer. There’s not much I can do to prevent myself from having cancer. It’s just really, there’s something I can do if I had cancer to shrink it or catch it early enough, but that’d be it.

What’s the biggest misconception about you?

Tate: People mistake my goofiness as cockiness. I’m really, really goofy and especially on the field, I have fun. If you know me, it’s kind of funny. But if you don’t, I guess it could kind of come off sometimes as being arrogant. Me playing with passion and being goofy.

Was there one time you really had to go back and explain yourself there?

Tate: I don’t want to answer that question and open it back up, so I’m not going to answer that one.

Best time of your life?

Tate: My college days. I was a two-sport athlete. Grades were decent. All my friends were within a five-to-10 minute walk. I could eat dinner, brunch, breakfast with my best friends in college and you don’t appreciate that until I guess you’ve grown up to be a big boy and live in different states and have different jobs. Some end up having families and you lose contact with them as much as it used to.

If you had to do your life over again so far, what would you do differently?

Tate: I think I wouldn’t take college for granted, I guess. I would enjoy every moment. I would try to, I would stretch a lot more to help myself now, probably.

Physically?

Tate: Like physically stretch my body. I wasn’t much of a stretcher in college. Kind of caught up to me.

Already?

Tate: Yeah, been in the league five years already.

When you say take college for granted, do you just mean the physical part of it or other stuff?

Tate: Really just appreciate it more, the bubble I was in, I guess. Playing for one of the most traditional schools. Like I said, having my friends all there and being the guy, really, in South Bend. I wish I would have given back to the community a little bit more, done more community service.

What’s the one thing in the next 25 years you want to accomplish?

Tate: I want to live, at least, for the next 25 years, for one. Really, just change people’s lives for the better. Hopefully get into some speaking, give some powerful insight to help people. Especially young teenagers coming from single-family homes, dealing with the stress and the pressure of being what’s cool in school. Just talk to them, just wrap it up and see where their head is and try to help them for the better.

Delve into first-person experience there?

Tate: Yep.

Know what would you say?

Tate: No, I would expect in the next few years I would have even more experiences that I can think about and let settle in and put them in perspective for other people to understand.