Most veterans detested training camp, but not me. I loved having a dorm room and a little fridge with snacks, and I looked forward to goofing around in the meetings.
Steve Young
You become a leader in times of trouble. Leaders emerge when things don't go well. When everyone else starts pointing fingers, a leader takes responsibility.
I've played more golf with Joe Montana and Steve Bono than I've played with anyone else. We've played a ton of golf. I always tell people; my relationship with Joe was as good as it could be.
For me, football is a quest. Quests entail overcoming hardship, trials of adversity in the pursuit of true joy.
Playing football in San Francisco was almost a transcendental experience.
People don't remember that Sid Gillman was my coach. He was an old crotchety guy, but he was the first one to basically say, 'You can't just run around'... I remember, he literally tied my feet up.
I think I always wanted to be quarterback so I could call the play.
Call me a quarterback, not a running quarterback.
No one will ever say Dwight Clark was selfish.
There are a lot of places you can play quarterback and you won't know. You won't know if you're good or bad because there's just not a chance to find out.
I can hit the whiskers on a cat with a football from a distance of forty yards.
Football's an intense game. I love that. It's awesome.
Perception is reality.
A lot of what you get done in the NFL is by perception. They perceive you as really talented, and they worry about you. You've got to come out of the locker room with something.
I always say football is very unnatural sport. Nobody loves to just ram into people.
Private equity is a science project for many, many years, and when you have a science project, it leaves the human beings as a secondary fact.
When fans showed up at Candlestick, there was a great sense of anticipation that they would watch not only winning football, but also artistry. Our offense was that sublime.
I got good grades. I played sports.
If you exhaust every play out of the pocket, what happens is you find more opportunities.
There's a negative effect when you run around without exhausting everything that happens with the play call.
People always want to grab the negative, but that's not my reality. It comes from my dad. He cracks me up the way he always says, 'Suck it up and be a big girl,' to my sister, or 'Suck it up and be a man,' to us guys. That's what I'm about.
When it's all over I might be able to say I've had the strangest career in pro football history.
So the truth is, if there's a lesson to be learned from mobile quarterbacks, it is deliver the ball from the pocket, which demands mastery of the data that is involved working in the pocket, which is, 'I know everything about everything.'
At the time I retired I was kind of known for it, as one of the guys whose career ended technically as a result of a big hit.
I have a photographic memory that enables me to visualize what everyone in the huddle is supposed to do on each of the hundreds of plays in our playbook.
I'm telling you, studying for week to week in the NFL, and memorization, and reflexive recall... you have to drive it into your brain so far.
You can be an astronaut, knowing it can be super dangerous but understand intuitively what the risk issues are. Not having the same usable knowledge about the risk of football, or any line of work, doesn't work.
I always look at the NBA as kind of a muddled mess in the regular season, and then you just get in the tournament, just get in. And then the great teams just get on a roll and play well or the team that is hot gets hot and goes and wins it.
The demands of excellent NFL quarterbacking I always said took every piece of me, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. It was like it just took it all, and I think that was what was so energizing about it and unreplicable.
When I played for the 49ers, we loved to see man-to-man defense. I could get the ball quickly to the receivers.
The pistol isn't going to go away, but the job in the long run is going to be to deliver the ball from the pocket.
I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Success is really about expertise.
Over time, I learned that how a quarterback moves the chains and leads his team to touchdowns is about as important as whether he actually does it or not.
While it's great for a quarterback to have athletic ability, his goal is to get the ball out of his hand, orchestrate the offense and not allow his ability to stand in the way of the offense running efficiently.
You don't know the demons people deal with, and you just have no idea.
My biggest problem when I was younger was trying to balance my ability with what the team needed me to do to officially run the offense.
I can't imagine as a rookie actually playing good football. I went through it.
I'm willing to share my experiences with any young quarterback.
Most people have an off switch and they choose when to go all out.
I believe there will be players who, instead of playing eight years, will play six. Who will closely watch how they feel. It will shorten careers.
BYU I think had a philosophy of nameless, faceless athletes for the greater good of BYU which is fine. We all did our thing and we're grateful for it.
Football, no one wants to ram into people. It's not human nature. You have to have a lot of incentive to ram into somebody to benefit others.
If sports has anything to do for society, football plays a great role.
I don't regret any of the places I went in football. Everything gave me an experience or memories that I'll have forever. We had more success in San Francisco, but it was a great time everywhere. I always had fun.
I always likened retirement to falling off a cliff, and then you have to kind of brush yourself off.
Scrambling, when no one's around, getting down, getting out of bounds, taking a glancing blow, those are all fine. You can do that all day long.
Just after I retired, Michael Vick came in. And just as background, I really thought the position had changed. I thought the dynamic pass-run, triple-threat quarterback was going to take over the league. And guys like Michael Vick and others would follow and that's what we'd do. But I learned the truth with Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.
Most young quarterbacks are on the field because their team stinks.
Donovan McNabb has great, fast feet and has learned to lock them in to run the Eagles' offense effectively.
