Top 60 Ryan Leaf Quotes

Playing in the NFL, it’s a privilege, it’s not a right.

I don’t know if I was ever meant to have that flashy lifestyle.

I have a very small sample size: 2-0 to start my NFL career. Talking a lot of smack. And then I walk into Kansas City and put up the worst football game of my existence. And I’ve always been this brash, arrogant kind of guy.

You don’t want to say the money changes you, but it definitely does.

When you’re talking to potential professional athletes, I really like to talk about the fact that even though you’re a great athlete, that doesn’t make you a good person. And if you can build that foundation first, everything else usually follows suit.

I had two amazing parents, two younger brothers, grandparents, a supportive community. Really loved.

The rule is you don’t play very long in this league. So you make the most out of it and you have to look at yourself in that fashion.

When I enjoyed football the most was when I wasn’t getting paid.

Certainly, with my giant overinflated ego, playing in the CFL would have been like failing.

I thought I was a god. I was more important than you, because I could do this thing where I played a silly sport that made me a better human being, in my eyes.

I don’t feel bad for myself.

Everybody’s got some things that have happened bad in their past. Mine was just very public.

If you deny the fact that things are happening to you, that this is going on, whether it’s negative or positive, you’re just putting yourself behind the 8-ball because you’re not facing it head on and dealing with it in a positive way that you’ve learned how to.

I think that if I was only known for who I was as a football player and only that, it just would have been a tragedy.

I’m stubborn.

Guys like me can put on 10-15 pounds in a week.

I do follow the NFL. It took me a while to get back into it, but I do follow it religiously now. Huge Packers and Steelers fan.

I wanted to be a professional athlete. Young men and women from Montana don’t make it to the professional level that often. And I always believed that because I was a great football player that made me better than you. And that’s not the case at all.

The hole I’ve dug for myself is very big.

There’s freedom in being rigorously honest. I lied all my life.

I was an ego maniac with a self-esteem problem and that’s what most addicts are like.

Life is life and there are always going to be struggles. But when you’re doing the next right thing it seems to make everything a little easier, a little bit better and a lot happier.

I’m the kind of competitor where if I’m able to play, I’ve got to play.

Many times somebody tried to help me be constructive and I just pushed them away.

I don’t want anybody to know anything about me.

I’m going to make a difference in other people’s lives because who I am as a person rather than who I was as a football player.

When people ask where I’m from, I tell them Washington, because that’s where I feel the most comforted by the people.

I’ve lived on $400 a month in college. I’ve lived on it fine.

I look back and see the integrity my dad had, but I didn’t gravitate toward that. I don’t see how I didn’t.

I had always been a quick healer.

I kind of got out of the spotlight and life’s never been this good.

I don’t make the right choices. I simply don’t.

When playing football became a job, it lost its luster for me.

Football is just a game. Everybody takes it so much more seriously than it is, but there are many more important things in my life.

The farther I go East in the U.S. the more I get recognized because of more sports crazy the East Coast is.

I was always worried about what others were thinking about me or how I was being perceived.

Every time I stepped on the practice field when I was in San Diego, I dreaded going to work. It wasn’t any fun. I didn’t like the people I was playing with. They didn’t like me.

You grow from all those things you go through.

Everybody tells me, ‘You’re going to be fine.’ Well, I know I’m going to be fine.

I had this giant ego of an athlete, but I was self-conscious at everything else.

We’re all flawed human beings trying to be a better person on a daily basis and I didn’t figure that out for a long, long time.

I know the Chargers made mistakes, but I made a bunch of mistakes myself, and I’ve got to take responsibility for that.

I grew up in a really supportive environment.

I grew up in Montana and played football my whole life.

I’m actually pretty reserved.

I’m not the type of guy who goes to members of my team or the other team and says, ‘Hey, I’m awesome,’ because I can improve in so many ways.

How can I go from this poor college kid one day and the next day get a check for $7 million. How’s that going to affect me?

The NFL Legends Community is the epitome of service. This isn’t about promoting you anymore. It’s about promoting something bigger than you.

I mean, Mike Riley is an idiot, but I can’t do anything to change that. He wasn’t supposed to be a head coach in the NFL.

Coaching in college is not a right. It’s a privilege.

I was a talented egomaniac with a self-esteem problem.

We’re all flawed human beings trying to be better but there’s consequences to your actions and you have to be accountable for ’em.

When I came into the NFL, there were three things that were very important to me: money, power and prestige. I was powerful now because I was a famous athlete. I had prestige because I was doing what everybody wanted to do. And I had a lot of money.

I’ve made mistakes and made them bigger because of the way I have reacted to them.

Being vulnerable is not a weakness.

I don’t look at myself and think I’m that special.

I was a college coach, and I messed up. And I found a way to deal with the consequences and be better.

I defy anybody to be of service to another human being and not have the most peaceful night of sleep you’ve had in a long, long time.

I didn’t leave school early to sit on the bench.

The third game of my career, we played Kansas City and I played as poorly as I’ve ever played in my life. I completed one of 15 passes and had two interceptions.