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And my father didn't have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time they didn't have black quarterbacks, and I don't think I could have made it in basketball, because I was only 5' 11". So I just picked baseball.
I've just tried to do everything I can personally to be the best quarterback I can be, whether it's doing extra work for my rehab, extra work in the film room, on the board, extra work out on the field with my drops and footwork.
With the quarterback position, because you're touching the ball every single snap, you want to make a play and you just have to guard against that. It's about making the plays that come to you, not necessarily chasing after plays.
As a quarterback, you've got a huge responsibility: You're touching the ball every single play. You have such a big impact on deciding the game, just in your decision-making and how you are with the football and your fundamentals.
I have unbelievable trust in my offensive line that they will get the job done. Not only them, but the running backs and as a quarterback, I have to do my job in getting the ball in the right people's hands and doing what I do best.
I've always wanted to play quarterback, and I lucked out to be able to play for my favorite team - America's team. I'm just living the moment. I feel like all of this was supposed to happen. When you work hard, things work your way.
Marino was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005, and his name always comes up when the conversation centers on the greatest quarterbacks of all time. But his greatness comes with an asterisk: He never won the Big Game.
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.
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.
People know Troy Aikman as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. That carries tremendous weight. Because he really guards against overexposure, or just saying stuff for effect. When he really says something that's critical, people notice.
From the standpoint that you try to adjust your offense to your quarterback, you try to adjust your football team around your players. You do the best you can with the hand that you have, and you've got to add some parts along the way.
You've got to try to find ways to dominate in any way - it ain't about getting sacks, it's about making the big plays. If that's pressing the quarterback, making them throw a pick - whatever you've got to do to try to dominate the game.
The argument has never been whether Kaepernick is one of the top five quarterbacks in the NFL. He's not in the top 10 either. But when you consider the alternatives teams are considering, Kaepernick's omission begins to look ridiculous.
Everyone talks about the good old days, when guys were tough and quarterbacks got crushed all the time, but back in the day, there weren't defensive ends that were Mario Williams - 6-7, 300 pounds, 10 percent body fat, running a 4.7 40.
The simplest way to win in the National Football League is to knock out the starting quarterback. You know, throughout the years, history has proven if your number one quarterback goes down, your chances for success become very limited.
The guys that are out there now like Calvin Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald they're making $16 million, $15 million a year, and I'm not looking for anything like that. A lot of that money goes to the quarterback position and rightfully so.
For 15 years I have been lucky enough to play quarterback in the NFL and it has been the most incredible experience of my life. There wasn't one second that I took it for granted or failed to appreciate what a tremendous privilege it is.
That's one thing you learn as a quarterback: focus. The better you are at focusing and the more you can continue to stay focused for a four-hour stage and really be zeroed in on what is happening, the better you play, the longer you play.
I don't think I'm ever surprised at how high the quarterbacks go. There could be a lot of teams that often times don't have a lot of first-round grades on guys that are going in the first round, and that's just the nature of the business.
He's been so successful, arguably the best quarterback ever to play the game. If you were trying to follow his footsteps, it would be incredibly difficult. I'd go crazy if I woke up every day and tried to compare myself to Peyton Manning.
I set the bar high, and I'll do anything, whatever it takes to win. I care more about this game than most people ever will. When you mix a lot of those things with a winning mentality, it's a good thing to have as a franchise quarterback.
People have assumed that I have to run the ball before I can throw it most all of my career, all the way back before high school. It's a stereotype put on me for a long time because I'm African-American, and I'm a dual-threat quarterback.
So the truth is, if there's a lesson to be learned from mobile quarterbacks, it is deliver the ball from the pocket, which demands mastery of the data that is involved working in the pocket, which is, 'I know everything about everything.'
Luckily, I had a guy like Andre Johnson to show me the ropes. He's had many quarterbacks in his career and he still had a successful career. Just having a guy like that to tell me to control what I can control, that's really all you can do.
I've always said, if everything was equal, from money to retirement to endorsement opportunities - all that stuff - if everything was equal, I'd play Arena football over the NFL. It was built for quarterbacks. It was just backyard football.
The only thing I've ever wanted to do is play professional football, and be a professional quarterback, so now that it's here and it's getting close, it's just kind of making all that pain and suffering and waiting and working hard worth it.
Extra thick skin is something every Bruce Arians' quarterback needs to have because the stuff he says to media is rated G compared to the stuff he says to your face on the sideline and after the game in the locker room and throughout the week.
Warren Moon and Doug Williams really didn't run that much. That's the negative stereotype when it comes to African-American quarterbacks, that most of us just run. Those guys threw it around. I like to think I can throw it around a little bit.
A quarterback has got to take control and I feel like I've done a good job with that. Not just what we're doing offensively, but in the locker room getting to know guys and hanging out with guys. All of that is going to make you a better team.
I don't think there's any question that the Arena League allowed me to flourish. I played three years in a league where the quarterback wasn't supposed to be stopped. We never wanted to kick. When I went into the NFL, I had that same mentality.
A quarterback that goes out and performs for you and is a franchise quarterback is more valuable than a player playing another position, but there's a lot more risk there. It's a more difficult position to play, and there are lot more failures.
Preseason football is hard to evaluate. It's never going to be clean for the quarterbacks. You have to overcome the ugly plays and be productive. It's a component of leadership that is necessary. The guys that make it in the league survive that.
Game day can be emotional, and there are a lot of ups and downs throughout a game, but as a quarterback, you have to be able to see the bigger picture, steady that ship, get all the guys focused in on the task at hand, and keep the thing moving.
To show my quarterbacks how much I believe in them, I let them pick their favorite plays that we'll run in the game. On the nights before a game we'll sit down in a hotel conference room and we'll have six third-down calls for certain distances.
I've played with some of the best that have ever played, obviously. I don't know if there is anybody that is a better technician than Peyton Manning. Tom Brady is another quarterback that I was fortunate enough to play with for a bunch of years.
In football, if you don't have the best O-line or receivers, maybe you're not as good of a quarterback as you can be. And it goes vice versa. If you're an average quarterback and you have a great O-line and great receivers, your play gets lifted.
There will always be hard times. Use adversity to fuel your fire. In high school, I wanted to play quarterback but couldn't until I was a senior. I played wide receiver instead, and this ultimately helped me because I learned more about the game.
I just think that's the key to all of the quarterbacks throughout the league. You want to have a consistent drop, a consistent balance in the pocket so that you can really get everything into the throw, so that you are throwing with good velocity.
I merely dared to say Tebow could be a successful starting quarterback in the National Football League - not a Pro Bowler, mind you, just a guy who could win games his way. Which prompted relentless attacks from anti-Tebow analysts and journalists.
I'm on the record as saying Andrew Luck can be the greatest quarterback who ever played the game of football. I've seen him do some unbelievable things that I still can't believe a quarterback was able to do. I have tremendous respect for that guy.
In this league you might have a quarterback within your division that you're worried about running all over the place, the next week it's a running back, so to be able to have multiple answers for every situation is probably a benefit for everybody.
I think the first thing that my sons will tell you, that I never tried to be their coach. And I didn't give them as much advice as some people might think, being a former player myself and a former quarterback. If they asked, I gave them my opinion.
If you watch most quarterbacks in the league, if you take more than two hitches, there's a good chance you'll be sacked. By recognizing things, it allows you to get to your fourth or fifth read on your second hitch and get the ball out of your hand.
As a quarterback, there's no better way to finish your year, in winning a Super Bowl, than with a touchdown pass. The chances of that happening, by the looks of most of the Super Bowls, is a very rare chance. Fortunately for me, I had an opportunity.
I think I could describe the perfect quarterback. Take a little piece of everybody. Take John Elway's arm, Dan Marino's release, maybe Troy Aikman's drop-back, Brett Favre's scrambling ability, Joe Montana's two-minute poise and, naturally, my speed.
If you can have a really good coaching staff, and you can have a really good young quarterback and do a really good job in player personnel and string together multiple successful drafts, your window is not small in the NFL because of the quarterback.
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.
As a quarterback your job is to drop back and give it to the open receiver, let them run. Obviously, there are times when you get some pressure and you have to make decisions, step up in the pocket and buy time for your receivers and deliver the ball.
I remember asking my mom, 'Can you be the quarterback and the drum major at halftime?' I mean it's like, what in the world? I wanted to go play quarterback, and I wanted to lead the band. I don't know how old I was but I vaguely remember asking them that.
Though little known in the U.S., the Dakar is a sports juggernaut in Europe, where France's state broadcasting company runs more than 25 hours of coverage, and the leading drivers and riders are accorded the same status we give to Super Bowl quarterbacks.