Top 50 John Madden Quotes

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.’

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

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.’

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.

Since 1981, I’ve spent every Thanksgiving Day broadcasting a game, and it is one of my favorite days. You can say, ‘Woe is me, I never get to be part of the tradition,’ or you can say, ‘Heck, we’ve got our own tradition, and it’s pretty good.’

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.

Jim Harbaugh has done a great job of coaching in the NFL no matter how you put it.

I’ve always said winning’s the great deodorant, and conversely, when you have a bad record, everything stinks, and everything starts to unravel, and everything falls apart.

When the going gets tough, I’m not always sure what you do. I’m not saying that I know how to fix everything when the going gets tough, but I do know this: when the going goes tough, you don’t quit. And you don’t fold up. And you don’t go in the other direction.

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.

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

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

I’m sure that had I not been a coach, I would have been some form of a teacher.

I’ve often said, ‘If I had one drive to win a game to this day, and I had a quarterback to pick, I would pick Kenny.’ Snake was a lot cooler than I was. He was a perfect quarterback and a perfect Raider. When you think about the Raiders, you think about Ken Stabler.

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.

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’m not afraid of flying; I just fear I’m going to die. I think I’m – vulnerable. I admit it. I don’t fly. I got claustrophobia. I don’t go in high buildings. I don’t do those things. I’m just myself, whatever that is.

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 never watched TV because I was always doing a game. I didn’t have any experience to be home watching games. I didn’t know how to do it. Brent Musburger and those guys could sit and watch every game and know the scores. And I was amazed and said, ‘I’d like to have something like that someday.’

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes you can be one of the best, but you don’t accept that if you don’t get the ring or win the Super Bowl. There’s a lot of good teams between the Super Bowl winner and other teams. Once the Super Bowl is over, we lump everyone into the other 31, and that’s not fair.

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

If you go back to the history of the ‘Madden’ game, I was probably on the cover of it half the time. So if I was to believe there was a curse, I would also have to believe I’d been cursed. And I’ve never had that feeling.

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 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.

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

In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.

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.

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.

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

The quarterback has to get rid of the ball quickly, so there’s not a lot of time to make moves to gain separation.

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.’

If you play the video game, you become more interested and you want to know more about it. You want to read as much about it as you can, see it live and watch as many games as you can. If you’re the type who wants to be as involved as you can in the sport, you’re probably going to want to play ‘Madden NFL.’

It’s a lot easier to get a suit than it is to get a coach.

Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.

Both of my sons used to coach high school football. When they started, I’d say things I shouldn’t have. So I learned my lesson.

In all the years that I’ve been in football – I went directly from coaching to broadcasting – I never really had a lot of experience watching it.

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

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

The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.

Every time I go to the theater, there’s something about the atmosphere, seeing something unfold live in front of an audience, that you can’t get out of your system.

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.

Knowing his coach likes him is more important to a player than anything else. To me, it was important to be able to chew out a player for screwing up and for him to accept it because he knew I liked him anyway.

When people watch football, they’re looking for fun things.

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?

Nothing jazzes me up like football. I’ve acquired more passion of the years, not less. Not to love it wouldn’t make sense.

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.