Run to Daylight! Quotes

“It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“They call it coaching, but it is teaching. You do not just tell them it is so, but you show them the reasons why it is so and you repeat and repeat until they are convinced, until they know.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“Tackling is easier to teach and keep tuned than blocking simply because it is more natural. If a man is running down the street with everything you own, you won't let him get away. That's tackling.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“It was the first time, too, that I truly realized that a ball club is made up of as many different individuals as there are positions on it, that some need a whip and others a pat on the back, and others are better off when they are ignored, and that there are limitations imposed by the difference in physical ability and mentality. The amount that can be consumed and executed by a team is controlled by the weakest man on it, and while others can give him physical help, he has to do his own thinking.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“It began to be a part of me, this sweep, this pay-off-the-mortgage play they are now calling The Lombardi Sweep, during my days at Fordham. I was impressed playing against the Single-Wing sweep the way those Pittsburgh teams of Jock Sutherland ran it. And I was impressed again in those early days of attending coaching clinics when the Single Wing was discussed. Today our sweep has a lot of those Sutherland qualities, the same guard-pulling techniques, the same ball-carrier cutback feature, and there's nothing spectacular about it. It's just a yard-gainer, and I've diagrammed it so many times and coached it so much and watched it evolve so often since I first put it in with the Giants eight years ago that I think I see it in my sleep.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“I look across the field and there is one man in the bleachers. He is standing there watching us with his raincoat over his head. "Who's that guy?" I say to John Gordon. "Only a nut would stay out in a rain like this unless he's scouting. Find out who he is." I don't make a fetish of secrecy.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“He's a great man on tips, too, those signs an offensive man will give you now and then that indicate what he is going to do. Some of those linemen will put more weight on the front hand if they are going to drive off the ball and they will sit back a little if they are going to pass block.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“That's what success did for him, and Jerry Kramer helped, too. When you see Jimmy Taylor run right into and over somebody on the field you wouldn't think that he'd always be seeking friendship and understanding. He has a great need for both, however, and he and Jerry hit it off and room together in training camp.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“They are the two best the defense has up front, and that 56 is disarming. He is rather round-faced and soft looking and he does not impress you off the field, but on it he is as good a middle linebacker as there is in the business. That 71 is just a great tackle, and those are the two who will plague me most of all.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“They have written about the mental toughness with which I supposedly have instilled this team and, when they ask me what it is, I have difficulty explaining it. I think it is singleness of purpose and, once you have agreed upon the price that you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to forget that price. It enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure and the temporary failures,”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“You're always saying," Vincent said, "that the only way to play the game or do the job is the way you're convinced is right for you." "That's correct," I said. "The rest will follow, or it won't.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“What success does to you. It is like a habit-forming drug that, in victory, saps your elation and, in defeat, deepens your despair. Once you have sampled it you are hooked, and now I lie in bed, not sleeping the sleep of the victor but wide awake, seeing the other people who are coming in next Sunday with the best defensive line in the league, with that great middle linebacker, that left defensive halfback who is as quick and agile as a cat and a quarterback who, although he is not as daring as Johnny Unitas or Y. A. Tittle or Bobby Layne, can kill you with his consistency.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!

“What success does to you. It is like a habit-forming drug that, in victory, saps your elation and, in defeat, deepens your despair.”
― Vince Lombardi, Run to Daylight!