To most boys with growing limbs and swelling sinews, physical activity is a natural instinct, and there is no need to drive them into the football field or the fives court: they go there because they like it, and there is no need to make games compulsory for them.
At some point, we're going to have to get to the point where, before you play football, I'm going to test you at some stage in your life to determine if you're susceptible to concussions. We need a test that shows us that your brain is situated a certain way that puts you at risk. If you are susceptible, don't play football.
I just want to be a guy that's reliable, make sure I take care of the football, make plays in situational downs, get in the end zone, help the offense move the ball, and win games.
I've been on a number of NFL teams, and a lot of them address situational football. But I've never been around a team that does it as meticulously as the New England Patriots.
I train about six days a week. I'm training at the same intensity as I did when I was playing football. I've done it for my entire life, and I love it.
My high school didn't have a football team; we just had like a surf team, because I grew up in Encinitas, California, which is the ultimate place where everyone skated or surfed, so it was a very different culture. It was, like, cool to be the art kid.
I just played football from an early age and didn't get involved in any other sports. We had tennis, cycling, ice skating - I'd like to have skated more, because it's so physical. Ten minutes on the ice and you really feel it in your back.
Eric Bischoff wanted to destroy Vince in the ratings, but we wanted them to stay in the game. We wanted it to be neck-and-neck. We didn't want to skunk the other team and spike the football every single time.
WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren't playing so well, you don't have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.
Almost any football play, even an off-tackle slant by a running back, offers the balletic beauty of athletic skill and the punishing drama of physical collision.
If you look at old football pictures, the jerseys were hanging, the sleeves were dangling, but now everything is tucked and tailored.
A football player is often bigger than a basketball player - more massive, that is. The basketball player is taller and more slender. So it is with redwoods. The tallest redwoods are often slender, and so they aren't the largest ones.
I thought, 'If I ever get a new football building, I want a slide.' Now I go down it every day.
I just love football. I've always enjoyed doing it - being outside with my mates, getting really muddy and dirty and smelly. It's something I always loved.
The more you and the organization can help take care of personal situations, the smoother the ship runs on the football end.
My plan always was to play college football, hope to get a few snaps in and then go on to medical school. As I went further in my career and got to my junior year, I realized as I looked around, ‘I got a shot here, and I might as well go after it.’
Football is something I enjoy doing, something I'm well-paid to do, and obviously that's a great privilege, but I'm just trying to be happy, and if there's an opportunity to do something fun, then I'll just do it. I don't hold back; I just want to be a regular guy.
Many people agree with me that many things are not clear in football these days and it is not something people who watch football deserve. The situation will be the same while football is run by people who do not understand football.
The team goals are always more important than individual goals. The ultimate goal is to win the Super Bowl and to do something special. The other little goals that you guys write up, those things take care of itself in the midst of playing football.
My sophomore year I spent exactly one day on the JV football team. It was the tryout day.
