Belichick is ‘a player’s coach,’ Beginning ‘a revolution’ in D.C.

Football

“I don’t think the coaches view Tom (Brady) as special as everyone else in football does.  Mr. Kroft thinks Tom is the greatest gift ever, but the coaches don’t.”

Anonymous New England Patriots assistant coach, quoted by Ian O’Connor in Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time

 

“Bill (Belichick) is more of a players’ coach than people realize.  The players love Bill.  He talks to them.  He has little personal connections with the players —  more than anybody in the facility.  The coaches, he doesn’t give a damn.  He’s like, ‘Get in your office and do some work.’  With players the door is always open.”

Chris Simms, NBCSN Pro Football Talk, on his former boss taking on the challenge of Josh Gordon 

 

“I think this will be Antonio Brown’s last year in Pittsburgh.  I think it’s come to that point.  I will be shocked if he’s back next year. . . . Why is he responding to guys on Twitter saying you’d be nothing if you didn’t have Big Ben throwing to you?  Twitter’s full of hate.  That’s what it is for the most part.”

Chris Simms

 

The Washington Redskins “are a combination of a bad team, a dull team, a terrible in-game experience, a sense that you’re being gouged, unresponsive management.  This is beginning to feel like the beginning of a revolution.”

Tony Kornheiser, long-time Washington, D.C. sports commentator, on the Washington Redskins having 30,000 empty seats for home games

 

“This is his fifth year in the league and he’s 26.  In the offseason he worked on that big windup he had two years ago that really affected his accuracy.”

Trent Green, NBCSN’s Monday QB, on the emergence of Blake Bortles as a passer  

 

“What will Carson Wentz try to do to compensate for lack of weapons?  Will he try to do too much?  Every time I see him out there in pregame warmups with that giant leg brace on, he just doesn’t look like he’s ready to me.  . . . It’s his playing style that got him into this predicament.  Is he gonna change?  He says he isn’t.  How long before Nick Foles is back on the field?

Mike Florio, Pro Football Talk

  

“You can’t take the hot man out.  You got the hot fire right now. . . . The guys who make those calls, they’ll make sure to go with the hot fire until the fire is out.”

DeSean Jackson, Tampa Bay receiver, on whether Ryan Fitzpatrick will be replaced by Jameis Winston when the latter returns from suspension for a game Sept. 30 against Chicago   

 

Baseball

“Jerry Reinsdorf is the leading candidate for worst owner of the year.  Reinsdorf has one commendable quality, but only one.  He has long been baseball’s best owner with diversity hiring.  It’s too bad Rob Manfred doesn’t learn about diversity hiring from Reinsdorf.  But Reinsdorf has lost touch with the successful way to run his baseball organization.  . . . Six successive losing seasons, making the White Sox sweep of Houston in the 2005 World Series a faded memory of the distant past.”

Murray Chass, former baseball writer for The New York Times

 

Basketball

“I was able to make a great life of it, but the really cool thing about basketball is it kept me out of jail.”

Charles Barkley, quoted in Basketball, A Love Story

 

“We didn’t get a basketball for Christmas because my mom could not afford it.  . . . So she made us a ball out of this grocery sack, stuffed it with cotton.  We were allowed two bounces in our head to make the pass or make the shot.”

Spencer Haywood, in Basketball, A Love Story