Steve Young Quotes

There's a way you have to play the quarterback position in the NFL. Maybe I'm a little bit old school, but I think you have to play the game in the pocket with consistency.

If you pay a QB $10 million, you don't want him to run the ball.

I actually watched Tom Brady a good amount in college. My coach in college was Kliff Kingsbury, and he actually was a backup for Brady at one point, and so he showed me things that he liked with Tom and his pocket movements and stuff he did within the pocket that I've tried to put in my game a little bit.

I think my pocket presence and my ability to extend plays speak for themselves.

When you're dropping back and everything's going on, part of you wants to force it, but you have to make the right decision and not force the ball and sometimes throw it away.

I'm actually comfortable a little bit out of range as well. I like to pick my times when to come in. I'm very comfortable in the pocket as well.

I know how important it is to have your quarterback standing upright. Matter of fact, I know how important it is not to allow someone hit on him period because I want him to think that this pocket is completely safe, no one is going to get to me and I got all the time in the world to make whatever decisions I need to make.

Everybody thinks when I say a guy is a good game manager, that's a negative, but I think it's a real positive. You have the ball in your hand every time when you're a quarterback. Whether you're handing it off or throwing to somebody, I think that's extremely important.

I think the number one job as a quarterback is protecting the football.

With any player, especially at quarterback, I don't care if you're talking Tom Brady or Peyton Manning or Drew Brees: you want to make sure to continue to hammer down the fundamentals, and it all starts with your feet. Everything starts with footwork.

Look at guys like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. Those guys have great arms, but people talk about them more as a quarterbacks and the intellectual side of the game and how they really dissect defenses - and then the arm is something else that helps them with that.

When you play quarterback your whole life, you're kind of taught to sit in the pocket. If you want to get out of there quick, you probably shouldn't play quarterback.

I noticed a lot of dual-threat quarterbacks in the shotgun or in the pistol, a lot of them don't last forever. I want to be in the pocket.

The truth is that in the NFL, the job is to deliver the ball from the pocket. That's the job.

Some of the best quarterback play is when you're able to move in the pocket and still make throws down the field because it's not going to be clean every time.

A guy like Drew Brees is a guy that knows how to undress a defense. Most of the time he knows where he's gonna go before he even gets the ball. So he's ready to deliver that ball almost as soon as it comes to his hands.

You have a little more time to make moves when you're in the slot.

I've got to have two hands on the ball when I'm leaving the pocket, when I'm moving in the pocket.

Any quarterback that understands what the offense is really about is going to succeed.

I worked at a place that followed a system where the quarterback was taught to take the sack rather than force the throw. That's kind of an old-school theory, but it has existed in this game.

The quarterback gets plenty of protection in the pocket, and he picks up protection out of the pocket; he's got protection down the field on his slides.

I think I'm very good at reading coverage and knowing where I want to go with the ball before the ball is snapped.

A quarterback is always going to be the most valuable player on a football field because he touches the ball every single offensive play.

Third down is a big thing with a quarterback: pinpoint accuracy, making good decisions.

If you can grab a ball and throw it, you can grab a ball and throw it. I don't care how tall you are, either. I'm not gonna see over a 6-foot-7 left tackle. You've gotta find lanes; you've gotta know where your guys are. It's not about the height: if you can win ball games, you can win 'em.