Quotes from young steve

I always felt like hanging around the pocket was trouble, but the truth is, the great players take the beatings in the pocket and expose themselves -- and that is the real risk.

The truth is, you will never re-create third and 10, down by four, at Texas Stadium, in the fourth quarter, don't try.

Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that's the truth in people's minds.

First of all, I wish everyone who loved football could stand in the quarterback's shoes just for a play, because I think it would be tremendously humbling to anyone who loved the game to say, "I didn't -- I had no idea." You can think about what it would be like, and the cameras are getting better at giving that perspective, that one that the skycam comes down and you get a sense of it, but you just -- you don't know.

We had two field goals and a touchdown and they had five field goals. So ... for us, to lose to a team kicking five field goals was like --? that was an extra slap in the face. It was like, it was the Giants, No. 1. No. 2, it was our three-peat. No. 3, we fumbled with it kind of in our hands. And we got beat by five field goals. It was rough to say the least.

My goal--and this is kind of my own little secret--but when I get married, just to head out and finish football and, and, and be a missionary around the world. Places where Steve Young--not that it's big really that many places--but places where they have no idea about football.

The game has changed. You can't go into a ballgame saying, hey, we have a great defense and we'll win 17-10. Those days, I think, are generally over, except if the Ravens play the Jets.

The sport assassin: You know I use it as a metaphor, not to cause any problems. You have to have that part of your personality. I've always joked that Peyton is a nice guy and comes off as a nice guy. And if the situation on the field is, yeah, really nice guy but then you walk away and you're dripping blood, like you don't know how it happened, like the knife is so sharp, because he's that kind of a guy; over my dead body is this not going to go down this way.

I'm trying to think of the number of championship games that we were in and that I was in, and I honestly lose track. It was like, have I been in four or five? Was it before I got there in '87, had they been in three or four? I don't mean to be flippant at all. I'm literally not sure how many championship games --? I know how many we won, that's easy, but how many we lost, they are bitter.

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

A running quarterback, to me, is safer. Because, once I got out [of the pocket], I didn?t run where there were a lot of people. I ran where there was nobody.

When you play quarterback in San Francisco, not much goes under the radar.

I like to, in the playoffs, I like to take a body of work in the last month. I just don't care what happened in September because I don't think it's really relevant.

Fundamentally, if the league is going to have a no-tolerance policy for domestic abuse, if we're going to be a global organization that's going to have this as a perspective, we've got to back it up. We can't be backed into it with a video with more coming out. We've got to take an affirmative stance about it.