Quotes from Ryan Leaf

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 spent money on all the wrong things. Private airfare. Things like that.

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.

It's hard to transition out of football. Even when you're super successful, guys who have played 18 or 20 years and have won four Super Bowls, they still have difficulty with that transition. They believe they're not ever going to do anything that important again.

I didn't know how to deal with real life issues the right way as a humble human being until I was humbled to the point of being put in a jail cell.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Try to be a better person everyday.

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 grew up in Montana and played football my whole life.

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

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.

I don't believe I was meant to be a professional quarterback. I was meant to have these life experiences and be an impact on others who've struggled. That's what I'm meant to do.

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 stubborn.

I've always been a stubborn guy and you've got to beat me up before I'll start doing something.

People hold me accountable. Before I would push people away, but that's not a way to be successful.

When do you realize when you're a kid that you're going to be great and everybody else doesn't understand that? I don't know. I just felt I could beat everybody.

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

I lied all my life.

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