John Madden Quotes
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Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to the football unilaterally, such as adjust the amount of pressure in a ball, without the quarterback not knowing. It would have to be the quarterback's idea.
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Justin Smith was one of the most underrated players in the NFL for what he did. He would sacrifice and do the dirty work, then someone else would clean up off it.
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I'm not afraid of flying; I just fear I'm going to die. I think I'm - vulnerable. I admit it. I don't fly. I got claustrophobia. I don't go in high buildings. I don't do those things. I'm just myself, whatever that is.
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Since 1981, I've spent every Thanksgiving Day broadcasting a game, and it is one of my favorite days. You can say, 'Woe is me, I never get to be part of the tradition,' or you can say, 'Heck, we've got our own tradition, and it's pretty good.'
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I don't know that the referee can be watching holding on the offensive line and get back to the quarterback. I think watching the quarterback is a full-time job.
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It's been the video game ever since I got out of coaching. Even when I was an announcer, fewer and fewer people remembered me as 'Coach,' and as the years went on, people just started knowing me from the game.
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I'd like to work with kids in special education - younger kids.
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The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.
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Trip Hawkins - and this was the early 1980s - was saying there's going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they're going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.
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Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.
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Baseball has better opening days and All-Star Games than the N.F.L. does. Ours stink.
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The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.
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I've never eaten just a few bites of things I liked in my life.
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Any time you get a new running back, whether it's a rookie or hasn't played a lot, that's the first thing you test, is their pass protection. That's big.
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To me, discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it.
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If you win a Super Bowl before you're fired, you're a genius, and everyone listens to you. But a coach is just a guy whose best class in grammar school was recess and whose best class in high school was P.E. I never thought I was anything but a guy whose best class was P.E.
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Having been in football all my life as a player and a coach and having been on the sideline, I think the closer we can get to bringing people what it's like standing and watching the game on the sideline, with a better view, would be the perfect situation for television football.
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The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.
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They're on the right road, but there's a long way to go on concussions, not only in the NFL, but college football, high school football and all football.
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Don't worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.
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When I got out of coaching, I had taught a class at the University of California, an extension class on football for fans. I was looking for tools. I was showing them films. I was going to write a textbook. Trip Hawkins came to me about making it a game for computers.
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The best thing about getting older is knowing history. The longer you live, the longer you have been in a sport, the more you know, and the more you know where things started.
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I was an old tackle riding around talking to people about sports. Like I've said to a lot of people over the years, 'I only go where old tackles go, and if an old tackle does not belong there, I'm not going.'
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One of the biggest gaps in sports is the difference between the winning and losing teams of the Super Bowl. They don't invite the losing team to the White House. They don't have parades for them. They don't throw confetti on them.