Drew Brees Quotes

Only in football is long-term injury the result not of accidents but of the game played properly.

You can only punish your body so long before you're stuck with a horrendous inability to do things you'd previously been able to do.

Sixteen games, to me, is a long enough schedule for anybody. We're already concerning ourselves with head injuries and bodily harm to all of the professional athletes. Add to extra games to it, (and) you are just increasing those risks.

Surely, sport is not fundamentally about the safety of athletes. If it were, we'd probably have to ban professional football, right after boxing.

I did enjoy football, but the injury factor for me, you know, I had so many issues. I don't know how long my career would've been.

On any play where there's a scramble of 22 men, blindside hits and unprotected hits on knees occur.

When you've been playing the game for so long and sports for so long, it can take a toll on your body, and that's what we're putting on the line, and that's what our argument is as players when we're doing negotiations and stuff like that.

I loved football. I'm so glad I played. But I didn't think it was wise for me to play longer.

I really have to accept the fact that I'm not a young man anymore, that I've probably taken one lifetime's worth of punishment already, and I really do need to be careful. Certainly I don't want other WWE superstars taking the shots I did. That makes me feel very uncomfortable when I see somebody get hit with an unprotected chair shot.

McMahon has made a lot of guys very rich, but he may also be taking years off their lives.

I can't take 200 hacks in the cage before the game. Not because I'll get tired, but because I'll hurt myself! I can't do that. I might get injured.

You're never going to go through a season with no injuries.

I want to leave this sport with a little bit of my brains left.

During the course of a 16-game season, everybody, in the end, is injured. It's almost as if pieces just get broken off, and you give up pieces or an appendage every year.

I don't want to be like these guys having neck surgery, then you got to go have another surgery just to continue to play this game. I love this game but I love myself more.

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

You have to try to win the ball at all costs and if someone doesn't get it quite right people get injured.

Ronnie Lott - he got a really good shot on me once and I learned that unless I wanted to shorten my career, I needed to steer clear of his path.

Ignoring the needs of your body, both physically and mentally, could be very harmful later on.

Have I ever left the field with a broken nose, black eye? Yes, numerous times. I've had a broken nose and a few black eyes. It's part and parcel of the game, really.

I think gymnastics can be a really brutal sport. I don't think it's supposed to be a brutal sport.

That's football. It's going to happen. Guys are going to get hurt.

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.

Guys play basketball and get hurt, and that's probably the easiest sport on the planet. We're actually fighting every day. We're wrestling; we're grappling.

Any time you get on the field, there's a possible chance of that happening. I think you're trying to make a play, and there is an inherent risk where you could get blindsided.