Jon Gruden Quotes

I've had the liberty of having a lot of control in the offences I've been a part of because I get the game pretty well, and I pick things up fast.

I feel like I know what defensive backs are going to do before they do it.

The best advice I try to give a young quarterback is, you need to know what you're doing. You need to know what you're doing, because if you know where to go with the football, you can get rid of it and throw it and you won't get hit.

Put on the game tape. The game tape speaks volumes because I'm in live action, I'm out there making reads, going through progressions, redirection protection, signaling hot routes, getting the offense in and out of the right play.

I want to know what coverage it is every single time. I want to line up and be able to read what the defense is trying to do to me so I can get open.

As a coach, they would love to sit there and say, 'It's going to be five steps, you're going to hitch up into a perfect pocket, you're going to look at number one - no; you're going to go to number two - no.' It doesn't work that way.

The five big mistakes in football are the fumble, the interception, the penalty, the badly called play, the blocked punt - and most of these originate with the quarterback. Find a mistake-proof quarterback and you have this game won.

Throwaways are OK. When a quarterback throws the ball away in our system, that's a plus. That's a plus decision. That's the way I've always graded it.

It actually took me a year to learn how to play running back - to understand what they were doing defensively and then what our guys were doing every single play.

I want to learn more about the game as a whole and about the finer points of technique across the line of scrimmage. I want to learn more about coverages and blitzes so I can kind of see the game before it happens.

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.

Go back through football, and you will see that the team with the best defense wins.

I'd say that, 99 percent of the time at Nevada, I knew what the coverage was and where I was probably going before the ball was snapped. It makes it very easy when I only had to read one person and know that I was going from here to here, and if not, I'm checking it down.

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

The game's just slowed down for me a little bit and I'm able to read the defenses and see how they're playing me.

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.

Even as a coach, sometimes you forget the little intricacies of the offense, the details of the routes, the timing of the footwork, and the timing of the offensive tackles with the different sets that they have.

When you can recognize hot throws and blitzes, that's when they can slow down their blitz and they don't want to blitz you as much because you're getting the ball out.

It's very tough to run my side of the line. Eight out of 10 plays, they don't get anything.

College has become a wide-open game - a lot of short passes, quick passes. Then you go to the pros and it's a whole different ballgame - things are happening faster, the patterns have to be more precise. Getting off the line of scrimmage is more difficult.

Whether it's third down, man vs. man or red zone, a lot of the game comes down to one-on-one matchups.

I'm used to the two tight-end sets.

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 watch the great quarterbacks like Peyton Manning and Drew Brees and Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers. They all play so fast, but it's under control because they know what the defense is presenting to them before it happens. It allows them to anticipate things a little quicker, and that makes all the difference in the world.

To be a great NFL player, you have to know what your opponent is doing, not just opposite your position but what they're doing all over the field. All the contingencies.