The Patriots had picked Brady in the sixth round, and he soon turned out to be one of the two or three best quarterbacks in the League, and absolutely perfect for the Belichick system and for the team's offense. So, as the team continued to make a se...
But how a game plan came to be, what a finished plan looked like, I had no idea. I’d heard that all copies were shredded as soon as the game was over.
I would have loved to have been a footballer like my great uncle Matt Busby, but I knew quite early on that I wasn't going to make the grade. Luckily I was told by the age of 13 that I wasn't good enough. That's not a bad thing. You see this 'X Facto...
One of the things you learn in football is that you're only as good as your last outing. I don't like to reflect on what we've done in the past. I'm not a very good storyteller, for one thing. I'd disappoint you. When it's time, I'll talk about the g...
I've always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I'd have a ...
I had a dream about you. You tried to stab me with the pointy end of a football, and I tried to stab you with an extra point. I wasn’t successful, so I took my six points and I went home.
As a longtime former resident of 15 years in Washington, I wish that everybody would stay off the Mall with their political cause so that we can get out there, you know, and play flag football or Frisbee, or walk the dog or something - you know, whic...
The energy of college football rivals that of a live performance for me. I am an extremely analytical guy and predicting these games is right up my alley, especially with a little luck thrown in. It is even more fun when I am winning and I have to sa...
My neighborhood was like 'The Wonder Years.' We played until 10 o'clock at night. We used to tell scary stories. I was the one scaring them. We used to play football by this place called the Myer's House. It was a big, spooky house with the gables; w...
I was not athletically inclined. I was very quiet, introverted, non-confrontational. My three older brothers were athletes - basketball, football - but I was kind of a momma's boy. Then one day, my brother Roger encouraged me to go to the boxing gym ...
In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keeping on. Sort of cheering for yourself in the great foo...
In the late-'80s, there was a big push to make American football big in Scotland. The Super Bowl was on TV, but it didn't really catch on. When I was a kid, though, I became a big Miami Dolphins fan. I don't really know why - I just liked the logo, I...
It seems like people want to blame me for everything. Whenever any issue arises, I'm said to have been involved even if I've had nothing to do with it. That's why I always focus on what I know, which is playing football, and try to be very careful wi...
Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, ...
I always had a philosophy which I got from my father. He used to say, 'Listen. God gave to you the gift to play football. This is your gift from God. If you take care of your health, if you are in good shape all the time, with your gift from God no o...
I'm an avid University of Miami Hurricanes fan. I hope to come to the day where I can still do some stuff for NBC and somehow integrate it with an RV tour of the South for college football. Luckily, my wife, she's a Florida State alum, so I wouldn't ...
Before playing football, I didn't fit in anywhere. My parents didn't have a lot of money, which they spent on our education to send us to Catholic private school in Oakland, mostly black. The other kids had more money than I did. I started school ear...
The good thing is I don't put the ball in my right hand and I'm predominantly left-handed when I'm running the ball. I just have to take care of the football and even if I have two hands that are 100 percent, I still can't turn the ball over. It's ju...
I suppose I'm happy when I know I've given a horse a good ride, no matter where it is. I like playing golf in the summer; I'm happy when I hit a good shot, and I enjoy watching Arsenal playing beautiful football, but overall I can't believe you can b...
I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn't. Hey, it made me a better leader: you have to take a lot of people's needs into account; you have to look down the road. Trying...
I remember when I first came to Liverpool, Pepe Reina helped with everything, and he made it easy for me. When I was Atletico Madrid captain, I tried to help everyone. These are the basics in football: you need to create an atmosphere and try to crea...
