Quotes About Pre-game

I probably have the longest pre-game warm-up in the NFL - it's actually gotten longer over the years.

I wear the same socks after I wash them, and I like to eat the same meal the morning before a game.

I don't have many superstitions, but I do have a few things I like to do out of routine and habit before a game.

All sportsmen have superstitions, or at least they have routines. You look at Rafa Nadal and the way he organises his water bottles. Me, I always put my left pad and left shoe on first.

You have to do a lot of planning, certainly in football. We watch the opposition three or four times before we play them.

I try and have a relaxed attitude and stay quite switched off until about an hour before kick-off.

You're trying to put yourself in that moment and trying to prepare yourself, to have a 'memory before the game. I don't know if you'd call it visualising or dreaming, but I've always done it, my whole life.

When I prepare for a game the names are not really important to me.

For a long time, I was an assistant in the NFL to George Allen, and George was paranoid that other teams were cheating on him... that they were offering bounties, that they were wiring our locker room, that they were putting food poisoning into the pregame meal of the other team's stars, stuff like that.

I make sure that I'm 100 percent ready to go before I put that tee into the ground.

At least with me, the match starts much, much earlier than the actual match.

Just about every Super Bowl team takes the first 3 days after the conference championship to get their players' ducks in a row: They purchase tickets, set family up with hotels, and take care of other loose ends. After that, it's work time.

The period before the game can be important to influence opinions, characters, personalities, feelings, and, of course, I use that to touch my players, to touch opponents, to touch supporters.

I'm probably the guy who keeps it loose around the room and tries to joke around with guys before the game, keeping things funny.

There is no point making ourselves nervous before a match.

I am nervous all the way through the national anthem and the first play. Once I get up and down the court a few times, it fades.

I shake everybody's hand before the game, but Oklahoma City, they don't shake hands. Only some of them, but I don't think they really shake hands before the game.

Thinking about your role will automatically get you in the frame of mind to get your strategy and game plan right before you step onto that field.

The real way to win a football game comes before you step on the field.

Some of the habits back then seem not so much of another era as from a different planet. On the Friday lunchtime before home games, for instance, the trainer Tom Curry used to inflate the match ball, lace it up and immerse it in a bucket of water, where it stayed, kept submerged by a brick, until just before kick-off. It would then be pulled out ready for action, saturated, weighing about half a ton.

The music before the game, they're playing old-school music and it's right above your locker room and you're like, 'These people are crazy, man. This is pretty cool.' I'm sure it has an effect, but after a few minutes, it's just basketball.