Nnamdi Asomugha Quotes

When football is your job, a lot of what you feel about yourself and about life can become attached to the outcome of those games. That’s probably true about a lot of jobs, but we suffer our losses pretty publicly. When you’re not getting the results you want, it becomes easy to get depressed.

I don’t talk smack because I feel like it’s a waste of energy.

I get a different pronunciation at least every week. I think the worst one, or the funniest one I got, somebody called me, ‘Oh-gooz-man.’

I give my all for the sport, and I just don’t like it when, if things don’t work out, people say, ‘Oh, he doesn’t care enough about football.’ That was the thing that hurt me the most.

You’re seen a certain way in the acting world. To them, you’re still a football player and not taken as seriously. They think you’re just doing it to be a celebrity, to keep your name out there. They don’t think you’ll prepare.

There’s a way to speak your mind. You don’t just go off and say whatever you feel is right. You have to say what you feel is right and say it if it’s something that works for the team.

I help receivers on my team every now and then, but I’m slow to do even that because they could end up my opponent the following year.

When a team wants you, you can feel it.

It doesn’t matter how well you play individually if the team isn’t winning.

Seven straight years of losing isn’t fun for anyone.

As far as acting, I just went in and just started training. It was the first thing I did right when I retired. I just went in and found class, and found people, found the right coaches that could sort of just train me along.

I think any time you’re able to humanize the plight of the wrongfully incarcerated, then you’re doing your job.

Everything in life is about confidence. The more you have, the further you’ll go usually.

When you’re playing to get into the playoffs, your contract is the last thing on your mind.

I’ve always worked my butt off physically and mentally.

I talked to a lot of people that switched careers. Not necessarily to acting, but switched jobs. The ‘becoming a student again‘ is the thing that always kept coming up.

For all of the achievements and awards, to be able to retire as a Raider ranks highest among all of those.

When I was a kid, I thought good acting was fascinating, and I could tell the difference. I could see that at like 9 years old.

My position in football was cornerback, and what your job is as a cornerback is to read the person that’s in front of you – read their body language and anticipate what’s going to happen next.

I don’t think you can ever get bored or lose focus as a competitor.

In film, there’s always this looking for the ‘If you lay down and burst into tears, you did a good job.’

I’ve had a chip on my shoulder every year that I’ve played.

The beauty of football is you have to perform through ups and downs in a public form with a team and the discipline and the pushing through it and the preparation that it takes to be great – all of those things have served me well.

I didn’t have the luxury of going to the four year school for acting.

My favorite piece of clothing as a boy was a purple Magic Johnson jersey from the Los Angeles Lakers.

I was never a big spender.

When guys get to a certain age or certain level in their career maybe they don’t do as much or work as hard so they start to lose some of that stuff. It’s inevitable that at some point your going to lose most of what you’ve had.

I always go back to the fact that one man can make a difference. No matter what the issue, we always have the power to change it.

I’m very grateful for my time in Philadelphia and I want to thank the Eagles organization for the opportunity to play here.

Oh man, you miss it so much when you finish playing, especially when you play for most of your life. You miss just being a part of a team and being a part of the guys. So I definitely think producing brought that back for me. A bunch of people working together for a common goal.

I come from a performing family. My parents are Nigerian, and their parents and their parents – and it’s all about performance in their culture, you know. The music. The dancing… you’re told to stand out at family gatherings and perform in some sort of way. You’re just kind of born into it.

People told me all of the time, ‘You could be such a big star if you just talked about yourself more,’ but I’m not good at that. It’s always been about team.

The leadership qualities that you have to have to be a producer on a film is something I learned being a captain on the team.

Obviously, teams are passing a lot more, and there are rules that… allow the offense to be more explosive, so you want to have as many defensive players and defensive playmakers and defensive backs that you can.

Football came in at an interesting time. My dad passed, and my brother was one year older than me. And so he was basically the man of the house – at like age 12. So I really just started doing whatever he did, and football was his thing, so I got into football.

I know so many people who‘ve been through situations where they’ve gone from one career to another and have had such a tough time because they didn’t have any support doing it.

I tell people all the time that football taught me about life in every single aspect.

It’s really refreshing to get these types of moments when people can say, ‘Yeah, you’re one of the best.’

I’m a class clown.

I was maybe halfway through my career, and I was shooting a Nike commercial, and the director came to the trailer and said, ‘Hey man, you’re really gifted at this. I get a lot of athletes that come in, but you were prepared, and you made everything seem very natural. I really think you should look into this.’

My freshman year, I started working with a group called Touchdown for Kids.

I was really close with Rob Ryan, so I know that Rex, being his twin, would be very similar to him.

I became stiff as a safety, and so I had to learn to move like a corner and think like a corner.

For athletes, it’s extremely tough to trust people with your finances. It’s so easy to be victimized.

I hate the term black sheep, but I just felt like I wasn’t keeping up. It was a subtle pressure I put on myself.