Everyone has their own greatness. Whether you reach your own greatness depends on your environment, your structure, the company you keep and your attitude.
Ed Reed
Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can't play this game forever. When I'm finished, maybe I'll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.
I want to be the best, but it comes with a lot of work. And it can be pressure if you put it on yourself in that way. But if I keep going the way I'm going, and with the good Lord guiding me the way he's been guiding me, and the way I let him take control of my life, the sky is the limit.
When I make a tackle or make a play and I have a slight pain or something, you're going to react the way you react.
I love this game, and I put my heart and soul into it.
We always said it's not suit-and-tie on the football field.
Help each other, encourage each other, lift each other up.
You know mental illness is one of the biggest problems in our world.
Not everybody likes Ed Reed.
I look at the quarterback and the receivers. You look at the quarterback, the formation. I focus on the passing game and react on the running game. You look at it over and over, then sooner or later, it becomes like a movie. You ever notice how you quote movies? That's all film watching is.
When you play sports, when you're on a team with people from different walks of life, and you have to look after each other and count on each other, race and all that stuff goes out the window when you are in the locker room.
I know the hustle that is in Louisiana. Knowing where you are from, really where you're from, helps you to help the community. That's every city, but New Orleans is just different. We have big hearts, but it's just a matter of us having the information, having the people to push you along like I had.
I'm not the kind of person to hold my tongue.
There's a reason why, outside of me dropping a few, people don't throw my way, man.
There's no place like Baltimore.
I know everybody wants to make it to the NFL, but it doesn't happen like that.
There will be good and bad, right and wrong. Your reaction of choice, good or bad, has consequences that affect you and those around you.
The only way we protect ourselves, the only way a player gets what he wants is by holding out.
I can't be lackadaisical when it's time for me to make any play, whether it's a tackle, fumble recovery, anything that it might be.
You don't hear about tradition in the NFL, but we have a tradition in Baltimore. It was just an awesome place to be.
To be playing in my first Super Bowl in New Orleans, it's special.
Monday night, there ain't a better time to showcase your talent.
I've been treated with the utmost respect by the whitest of white guys, and I've been treated bad by the whitest of white persons. I've been treated bad by the blackest of black persons and treated good by the blackest of black persons. So at the end of the day, I know it's about humanity - do you have a good heart or a bad heart?
There's not many people - only really the great ones - who realize what they were born to do.
When I'm on the football field, I'm giving you everything. Do the Ravens know that? Yes they do.
I always know how to play this game. It's about being smart.
Just being from Louisiana, being from the southern part of Louisiana, Metairie, close to New Orleans and growing up in St. Rose. There are a lot of things to overcome.
We are human and regular people at the end of the day. We're not immune from the trials and tribulations that go on through life.
We need more of our young youth graduating from college trying to get their education, and trying to be contributing members, positive contributing members to the community.
Coming out of college, I wasn't considered the fastest, the biggest or the smartest. There was no way around that.
When kids grow up into adults now... they learn that taking care of their body is like taking care of their car. You're not going to put bad gas into your car. Why not treat your body the same way? It makes all the sense in the world for us to do the right thing for our bodies.
Working out is a part of life.
You've got to be smart about tackling.
Football has always been a contact sport, and it's always going to be a violent sport, and there are going to be repercussions from that. But every player that ever played this game and will play this game, they're signing up for it.
The game takes a toll on your body.
Everybody in the world knows that plans tend to change.
You have to be coachable.
When you've been playing the game for so long and sports for so long, it can take a toll on your body, and that's what we're putting on the line, and that's what our argument is as players when we're doing negotiations and stuff like that.
We tend to want to stay here in Louisiana as Louisiana people. We've just got to be mindful that there are other things out there, and we really need to open our kids' minds to get them to go to college. Get them to get away. Then come back and help the next ones behind us.
I always said I wanted to become a master of my game, like Bruce Lee. I mastered my art of football, because that's what it truly is when you understand it.
We had a great staff in college, so after I got to the league, I'd already seen stuff I knew. Then it was enhanced, playing the game with great guys like Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, Chris McAlister.
I love to have my football camps. I love being a part of that.
I don't want to play till I'm 40.
I don't want to be like these guys having neck surgery, then you got to go have another surgery just to continue to play this game. I love this game but I love myself more.
Football is a reaction sport.
Not every officer is a bad police. I work with police officers. I know first responders.
Especially in black communities, we've been so groomed to stay where we are and not like people in the other neighborhoods. It's crazy. It won't allow people to experience life and see what the world truly has to offer. People are stuck in their ways, stuck in their communities, stuck on their streets.
I love Bill Belichick. He is a great coach, great man - raising men to do the right thing and win championships in this league.
It helps you as a person when you're teaching something to somebody to understand it even better.
I've just been playing football for a long time. I've been playing football since I was a little kid, so it's just some natural blessings that God has blessed me with to get to the ball and understand what I've been doing over the years.
