A drug-free life is a champion’s life.
Coach didn’t play the game for the money, he played because he loves the game. He played so he could get up before dawn and go to the weight room and push iron until he couldn’t move another muscle. He played so he could run extra laps in the grueling summer sun during two-a-days until he puked. Then he’d run until he puked some more.
Last year there was pressure. This year there’s confidence.
Team unity is this year’s mantra. We took it upon ourselves.
He has a very good idea how to beat them. Just follow his time-honored formula: hit back, keep it close, minimize mistakes and wait for the other team to self-destruct.
You have to take it to them physically. Smash mouth. Hit’em in their moustaches.
Thrive because of physical and mental toughness. Be better prepared.
Compete with grace, and if you must lose, then lose with grace.
An out route. I like to think it’s one of the best passes I throw. Unfortunately, I underthrew it. The defensive back made a great read and broke on the football. That’s just the game of football. Sometimes peanuts, sometimes shells.
He had me. I had to try and come up with a big play. It’s the only thing I could do. That’s what defensive coaches teach you, to strip the ball, and that’s what I did. Old habits. Defense is all about turnovers.
They like to get a quick start at the snap. Work on your cadence. Get them to jump offside, then – boom! – free play. Think home run then. They pride themselves on turnovers. They tackle the football. If we don’t turn the ball over, we win the game.
Eye contact is made. The ball is drilled. Touchdown.
(After a play fails, the QB tells his receiver) If we get that same play again, then I am going to check to the same thing. Only you don’t run the slant you just ran. You run the slant and go.
You have a hundred guys out there running into each other for three hours, then some guy who wears Birkenstocks runs out and tries to win it. (re a last minute field goal attempt.)
Football here has never been just about winning.
I have always tried not to get too high or low about all of this. I’ve just tried to keep my shoulder to the wheel.
That nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic.
No one ever says ‘enough’s enough.’ No one ever takes a stand. Take a stand.
Great players make great coaches, but great coaches make champions. – Darrell Royal
There’s no doubt we have to execute for the full sixty minutes
D is the key.
Real estate. (slang for yardage)
Don’t celebrate a win at half time.
Football, it’s a game of attitude.
The essence of a game plan is matching what your team does best against what your opponent does poorly.
He greeted everybody with barely a nod. You knew he knew he was great. He wasn’t nervous. He was relaxed, confident he was a complete and utter stud. A killer in cleats.
You wonder where people like that come from. What combinations of genetic genius, chance and karmic cosmos conspire to endow a single human form with such speed, strength and size. Such rightness to its task.
Genius, he was all of that. Tools simply given to him really. If you want to be a great football player, the best way to start: choose your parents very carefully.
Maybe I am afraid. Fear pushes me. I thought, I don’t want to leave this game as a bust. I can’t leave this game as a bust.
The kind of deep satisfaction that comes when you have vanquished an enemy while defending the honor of those he has wronged.
Emotion and resolve cannot, by themselves, carry a football team to victory against a more-talented opponent. But it’s a good start.
We are way more disciplined and we don’t get pushed around.
I was going deep and he was throwing it as hard as he could.
Reverse. The one guy who wasn’t fooled, so I stayed at home just like I am supposed to. Most of the offensive line and the quarterback out in front of the runner. I’m outnumbered, in a no-win situation.
We had thrown a little comeback route earlier in the half. We just ran the companion play with it, a little out-and-up. I got behind the cornerback.
For the score, on third and goal from the 3, QB hit WR on a little crossing pattern for the go-ahead score.
I am going to get open. I remember in fall camp, Coach telling me that three yards is the prime distance for this one route. It’s a pick play, a rub play.
I said, “Coach, I can score on a crossing pattern.
He gave me the thumbs up. Coach says, “Go do it. Do what you know you can do.”
I get back out there, on the field and I can’t believe my eyes. They’ve got a linebacker on me and he’s playing six yards in the end zone. I’m thinking this is a touchdown. This is six. Right now. Throw the damn thing to me. Throw it.
QB threw it.
A lot of guys are trying to make big plays. They just need to go out and play fundamental football.
A lot can happen when you put the ball in the air and most of it is bad. You just can’t throw the ball to the other team and survive. An interception can break a team’s back.
Turnovers kill.
You can’t go out on the field in front of God and everybody and play half-ass. You can’t come out and make a play here and relax, make a play there and relax. You have to go hard all the fucking time. Or you are just kidding yourself.
Because you are not kidding anybody else.
We really came out fired up. Everything was kind of clicking. It wasn’t a matter of them stopping us. It was a matter of us stopping ourselves.
Pass interference!
I am learning a lot from this game that has nothing to do with this game.
I like it when they underestimate me. I am nothing if not unimpressive at first glance. Sorta shortish and kinda slow, that’s what people assume.
Average height, and weight proportional, I remind you. And sneaky quick. A deceptive ability to change gears. Get to top speed, which is okay not close to what you’d like, in a hurry.
Okay, so I’m slow. Can’t dance either. I am the only brother anybody ever heard of couldn’t keep a beat. Sue me.
I can run a pattern, precise routes. Lot of great receivers weren’t fast. Steve Largent, the best ever until Jerry Rice, was cut, cut, by his first pro team. For being too slow.
There are faster guys than Rice, for that matter.
You don’t catch the ball with your feet. I got hands.
Precise route-running, give me a seam, a crack and I’m going to take it.
Leadership, not just talk, but demanding things of the players around you, step up your game. establish a tempo from within. Not just on the field but off the field. Like lifting weights, off-season condition, attention to detail.
When you get bit by a snake one time, it’s the snake’s fault. When you get bit by the same snake a second time, it’s your fault. We knew what we had to do to get the win. And that was to stay focused, play hard and get the ball back for our offense.
We had some spots where we shut them down and we had some spots where we didn’t. When we came in at halftime, I told everyone,’Who cares what happened in the first half?’ Let’s go back out there and get our respect back.
They don’t make a lot of great plays but they make the routine play over and over and over.
I try to make all my moments important.
You hear a lot about positive thinking but there is a power of negative thinking, too.
If positive thinking was horse manure, I could grow grass on my desk.
Great leaders understand the importance of sacrifice. Many leaders don’t understand that doesn’t mean sacrificing others.
A lot can happen with a little hard work.
He has a chance to be a professional ballplayer. How far he goes depends on how disciplined he can be now.
It sounds boring but what sets this team apart is its work ethic. I’ve been here a year, and sometimes I still can’t believe how much effort goes into things, the perfectionism, the repetition. A thirst for success, that’s why we standout.
At some point you have to bite the bullet and do what you have to do to get things right for the long term.
Ain’t that the truth.
I know there have been times when we haven’t been in sync, when we’ve pulled in opposite directions. We’re all together now.
Need that pressure-be-damned attitude.
Nobody’s unbeatable.
Luck? This wasn’t a gift. Luck comes when preparation meets opportunity.
Instead of turning on him when he played badly, they picked him up.
You have to do what you have to do to keep yourself in the game.
Off the court, X is a total gentleman. On the court, he is vicious.
You know what you can do.
He was afraid if he kept performing at that level, everyone would expect it and sooner or later he would disappoint them.
You can do a lot of things if you don’t know you can’t.
I can’t exceed anyone’s expectations. But just because you can’t do that, doesn’t mean that what you’ve done isn’t worthwhile.
Sometimes we coaches are our own worst enemies. We see every single wart and are so critical of our own players. Few players will ever live up to our own expectations. We just expect too much.
In NFL jargon, he’s a three-and-one player. He goes hard for three plays, then takes one off.
We never knew which Jack would show up.
That’s his one drawback. I often had to tell him during games, ‘C’mon, we need you.
When an opponent is weak, I have a tendency not to come as hard. I will do just enough to make it obvious I’m the better player. Then I save myself for the games that mean the most.
When I’m on the line, I feel a burning sensation in my stomach. In that intense moment, I want everything to start moving. I can’t act that way off the field. People would think I’m psycho. Actually, I’m a laidback guy. But when I play football, I’m an intense ball of heat.
Four wideouts across the field. R was wide right with W slotted inside, and C was wide left with N in the slot.
Coach sent in a play called 76 All Go, which is just what it sounds like.
Threw a bomb.
Man to man coverage. It’s what we call Cover four. No nickel, no dime. Nothing two-bit about it. Four defensive backs against four wideouts. Best against best – that’s what football is all about, isn’t it?
Strong safety: I had to get a read on the quarterback, and if he opens up, then I get over on the outside receiver. I might not get the ball, but I have to knock the stuffings out of him. Unfortunately I got more of Mark (cornerback) than Rice.
When I dropped those three balls, I didn’t get down on myself.
My coach told me I had the ball, but I didn’t watch it in.
A possession receiver.
(Coach) whose game plan is largely predicated on working over a defensive weak spot.
Forget it, it’s only a game. But if it’s only a game, why have we done all this work. I had struggled to climb a mountain, but as hard and as high as I climbed the mountain only grew higher. The better he played, the better he needed to play.
My stomach hurts. I don’t feel like playing. Your stomach will stop hurting the moment you start playing.
Wherever you are, the bottom line is the same. Win. The pressure is the same. Everybody has the same problems. But I don’t dwell on it. You know what I always say? Better to aim at the sky and hit an eagle than aim at an eagle and hit the ground. – John Cooper
I wasn’t born on third base. I bunted my way on, took second on a passed ball, then I stole third…
As Joe Paterno says, don’t bad-mouth your kids. They’re all you got. You can’t draft’em. Can’t trade’em.
A symbols’s a symbol, wherever you find it.
Move those puppies.
We’re in a position where we’re looking for pieces, not a foundation.
If he raced his pregnant wife, he’d finish third.
Would someone tell me where tradition starts?
As a coach, I want to help my players get the most out of themselves.
The critical difference between a positive and a negative experience – at most levels – is the coach.
Use repeated drills to develop fundamental skills.
It’s in the tough times that we learn about each other. And ourselves.
(As a leader) I’ll scream when I need to. When I don’t need to, I don’t scream.
Unless you’re out there, you don’t understand how ferocious and violent and what velocity the game is played. Some teams are not advocating injury, but they are advocating violence. No other game is played that way.
He. Could. Go. All. The. Way.
11/30/95