Nfl Culture Quotes

Look, I spent six years in Philly. And for the longest time, I thought there was nothing like Eagles fans. Until I got to Buffalo.

Biggest lesson I learned my first year in the NFL is no one gives a crap about what you did last week. This league is about what have you done for me now. That's the NFL. It's also our culture. So you keep working hard because that's the biggest truth about football.

Only 7 percent of NFL fans have ever been inside an NFL stadium. Seven... have ever been inside. So the NFL is certainly about the Colosseum of Rome. It can't be a studio game.

But I'm not an Atlanta Falcons fan. Nobody is. Sure, the team has its followers, its adherents, in Atlanta. But they don't follow the team the way fans from other teams follow their teams - the way, say, fans of the New Orleans Saints follow the Saints.

But in the NFL, you know you're not playing for the 'T' on the side of the helmet. You're not playing for the color of the Steelers. You're playing more because they're paying you to play and you have a family to take care of.

It's the NFL. You have to earn it every single day. You're only as good as your last game.

They give us this presentation every year about the NFL being a brotherhood. And if something is going on with one of your brothers, I feel like we should be there to have his back and speak up for him.

I feel like in the NFL, they preach loyalty and family and they have none for you. As a player, you see it's not a family during negotiations, how it becomes them versus me or me versus them. That's part of the NFL I believe the fans don't see.

People assume cheering in the NFL is mostly about a girl trying to snag herself a big, beefy, stinkin' rich football player. That is not the case.

In the NFL, there's never really that moment where you're like, Hey, I made the team. Or: Hey, you made the practice squad. You just kind of show up the next day and go to work. Nobody really says anything. You just kind of go to work.

'Hard Knocks' seems to have done for the self-serious NFL what the witch did for Rapunzel: persuaded it, somehow, to let its hair down.

I don't know how to put this, but to some people, the NFL is basically modern-day slavery. Don't get me wrong - we get paid a lot of money. There's a sense of 'shut up and play,' that this is entertainment for other people. Then, when we go out in public, we're like zoo animals. We're not human beings.

NFL fans have less sympathy for fallen players than the Romans had for blind Christians.

As an NFL rookie, I had to buy meals for older guys. I appreciate hierarchy. I understand teamwork.