Baseball has better opening days and All-Star Games than the N.F.L. does. Ours stink.

Any defensive coordinator is worried about two things: a running quarterback and a deep ball. You know, don't get beat deep and don't let the quarterback run, because a big part of your defense can't account for the quarterback as a runner, so he gets a free run.

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.

Thursday night football is here to stay. So we're looking at ways to make it safer. Now they're playing division games, so you limit travel. Now the question is, should you play Sunday night before a Thursday night?

That's the biggest gap in sports, the difference between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl.

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.

Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.

If you look at tailgating, everyone does it. It's for everyone who likes to cook outdoors. It could be a 4th of July picnic.

We need the quarterbacks. It's a passing league and a quarterback-driven league. We need the Peyton Mannings in football uniforms out there playing - the Tom Bradys, the Drew Breeses, the Philip Riverses - we need those guys instead of them standing on the sideline.

You're not going to eliminate concussions. Anytime you hit your head, you have a chance of getting a concussion, in any sport, too. I think we have to learn more about it. Part of it is rules, part of it is equipment, part of it is medical studies, knowing more about the brain.

I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I never really had a job. I was a football player, then a football coach, then a football broadcaster. It's been my life. Pro football has been my life since 1967. I've enjoyed every part of it. Never once did it ever feel like work.

I get a certain feeling when I go to Lambeau field in Green Bay. Soldier field in Chicago is special to me. Those are the places that I really like. The stadiums.

You wouldn't do something for a receiver to catch the ball if the quarterback couldn't throw it.

I would never bet against Peyton Manning. You know about the age and the neck and the strength. But I had George Blanda, and as he got older, he got smarter, and he just got rid of the ball quicker. I watch Peyton, and I see George Blanda.

Sports has always been a pass-through. You pay for something, and then you pass it through to television, you pass it through to advertisers, or you pass it through to season-ticket holders, luxury boxes and then the fans. Then it all adds up, and you take in more than you pass out.

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.

I have this set-up at my house where I have one big movie theater screen that's 9 ft. by 16 ft. Then, I have nine 63-inch monitors around it; four on either side and one underneath. So I get all nine one o'clock games, and I can switch them onto the big screen. That's what I do on the Sundays during the season.

Even when I was a little kid, I hated to dress up. I hated to put on regular shoes. I wanted to play all the time. I hate to wear any kind of coat or sweater. I've never liked hot. I've never liked to be warm.

The only things that smell good are fat and sugar. Tofu being boiled doesn't smell good. Anything that smells good is fattening.

I'm a firm believer that there's no way that a six-year-old should have a helmet on and learn a tackling drill.

People say, 'Is broadcasting the same as coaching?' I say, 'Hell, no.' Coaching, you win and lose. Broadcasting, you don't win and lose. Coaching was a lot bigger than broadcasting.

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.

The thing that I always respected about Bruce Arians was, when he was at Pittsburgh, he let Ben Roethlisberger decide what he liked. I used to do that. You can put something in and force-feed it to a quarterback. But if he doesn't like it and have his heart in it, it's not going to be as good as when he really likes something.

It takes about three times as long to explain to someone why you won't give them an autograph as it does to actually give them an autograph.

The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.

Sometimes we think videogames are just games for kids, and then once they get out of grammar school or high school, they never play again, but that's when they really start playing.

Some day we're gonna have interactive television where you can pick the shot that you want. You can watch defense, or you can watch the end-zone shot, or you can watch an isolated shot of Terance Mathis or whoever you want to. Because right now, the only thing that you watch is what the producer or director decides to show you.

Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to a 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.

If someone remembers me as a coach, they still call me 'Coach,' but if they know me for the video game, they just call me 'Madden.'

Discipline is knowing what you're supposed to do and doing it as best you can... On third down and short yardage, the Raiders don't jump offside. That's discipline - not a coat and tie, not a clean shave.

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.

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.

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.

I never professed to be perfect. I do something wrong or something stupid, I laugh at myself.

I would never be one to critique the announcers when I watched games. I try to watch the play and listen to the broadcasters and what they are pointing out. I was never one to say this one was good or bad.

If you think about it, I've never held a job in my life. I went from being an NFL player to a coach to a broadcaster. I haven't worked a day in my life.

I've never eaten just a few bites of things I liked in my life.

If a guy doesn't work hard and doesn't play well, he can't lead anything. All he is, is a talker.

I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically.

We need to let the referee's sole thing be to protect the quarterback and get those late hits out of there. They even have a stat on television that says 'knockdowns.' Knockdowns means that you knock him down after he throws the ball. The assumption is, if it's legal, we'll make excuses for them.

I've got five grandkids. They play baseball, they play football, they play basketball. I go to all the games. You always have that urge to say something when you're watching them. But I've learned to keep it to myself. I've blurted out some things and embarrassed myself.

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.

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.

There's so many kids who only know me from the video game. And they want to know if I'm home - and if I have a video game I can give them on Halloween. And sometimes they're surprised to learn there actually is a 'Madden.'

I like to hear about what people do. That's more interesting than talking about what the hell I do.

I respect coaches; I respect what good coaches do. I know that you don't learn to be a coach in an hour and a half.

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.

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.'

There's so many kids who only know me from the video game.

If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they've had a bad day.