​T.J. Lang has become synonymous with the Green Bay Packers in recent seasons, having been their starting guard for over five years now.





But Lang wasn't always destined to be the Packers' starter, and says there's a good chance he never would have been if he hadn't gotten his life together.



The Green Bay Packers offensive lineman had to turn his life around real fast. https://t.co/s3R3vr2lgX — Packers247 (@NFL_Packers247) October 1, 2016

​​In talking with ​ESPN, Lang discussed his first couple of years with Green Bay after being drafted in 2009. Spending most of those first two years as a bench player, Lang took to a schedule of heavy drinking.





Thinking it wasn't an issue at the time, Lang told Jason Wilde in hindsight, "I was taking it way over the edge with what I was doing. I’m ashamed of it a little bit, but it made me realize that that’s not the way you’re supposed to act when you’re a professional football player -- really, a professional anything."





Though never scolded by a higher up in the Packers organization, Josh Sitton, a fellow Packers offensive lineman, called him out on his behavior after the Packers won the Super Bowl in 2010, texting Lang to get his act together (he used a different word than "act") because there was a real chance of him being the new starter on the line.





Lang took Sitton's words to heart. The next season he won the starting guard job and has yet to relinquish it, and even signed an extension in 2012.





Lang is no longer the hard-partying man he was then; he's married now, to a woman he met around the time he cut down on his alcohol consumption. She now has a baby on the way. When asked if he misses those days, Lang said, "I kind of miss it once in awhile. But there’s no way I would ever trade that life for what I have now."