Stephen Gostkowski Quotes

Football is a violent sport. Somebody's going to get hurt. It's the game. Just hopefully, you're on the good side of it.

I want to play until I'm 38.

We're hoping that there is large-scale recognition that CTE is a risk when playing football.

Football is inherently dangerous, and that will never change.

My generation, people who played with me, they're suffering from football.

As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.

News writing and sports writing have become synonymous. And it started with, you know, free agency, and now it's in the concussion debate.

Coach Lombardi treats us all equally -- like dogs.

If you're in college, if you're in high school, if you're in elementary school, if you're in a youth league, if you're in the NFL, football's football.

Some people get nervous when I run because quarterbacks, they gotta go down and stay healthy.

My father was an NFL running back, so I feel like I might be more susceptible, genetically, to CTE.

Older readers will remember there used to be matches on Christmas Day. I remember leaving the fireside and the presents to watch matches on the day as a boy but such matches were rare by the time I began playing.

It's football. Guys get hurt all the time.

A lot of people believe that I retired from the game of football because of concussions - that is not accurate. I really retired primarily because of a degenerative back condition that I had.

Sometimes I wake up and I think, where did my memory go? But at the same time, I signed up for it. Football has been like that for a long time, for ages.

Whether it's one play in the NFL or 1,000 plays in the NFL, your pads will come off eventually.

It was difficult to step away. I've always been an athlete. And to give that up was extremely daunting. The looming factor of brain damage, to me, was too strong.

And as a football coach in the National Football League, I know for sure that it's going to end someday.

Professional football is the most violent thing your eyes have ever seen.

Football has always been a contact sport, and it's always going to be a violent sport, and there are going to be repercussions from that. But every player that ever played this game and will play this game, they're signing up for it.

I remember after the surgery, the next day, my mom was like, you know, 'Don't get your bandage dirty. Don't go outside and throw the ball.' But I came back inside with a football in my hand with a bloody bandage, but I knew I felt better. And I was just happy to play.

I don't know too many pass rushers playing at 40.

My experience over my five years at Wisconsin and my one year in the NFL was that there were times where I couldn't play the game safely. There are positive measures we can take... but on a lead play, on a power play, there's violence.

People don't realize I tore my rotator cuff when I was 12 or 13. At that time, being so young, we decided just to not have surgery.

I'm concerned about the future of football, because we have paid a lot of attention to concussions. We are more aware of concussions. But it's really the repetitive minor injuries, the ones that are asymptomatic that occur on almost every play of the game, the sub-concussive hits: that's the big problem for football.