Ed Reed

We all played sports, my brothers, my daddy, my uncles. That's all we had.

I look at the quarterback and the receivers. You look at the quarterback, the formation. I focus on the passing game and react on the running game. You look at it over and over, then sooner or later, it becomes like a movie. You ever notice how you quote movies? That's all film watching is.

I am going to graduate school, but that ain't got nothing to do with football.

When kids grow up into adults now... they learn that taking care of their body is like taking care of their car. You're not going to put bad gas into your car. Why not treat your body the same way? It makes all the sense in the world for us to do the right thing for our bodies.

I've been treated with the utmost respect by the whitest of white guys, and I've been treated bad by the whitest of white persons. I've been treated bad by the blackest of black persons and treated good by the blackest of black persons. So at the end of the day, I know it's about humanity - do you have a good heart or a bad heart?

Especially in black communities, we've been so groomed to stay where we are and not like people in the other neighborhoods. It's crazy. It won't allow people to experience life and see what the world truly has to offer. People are stuck in their ways, stuck in their communities, stuck on their streets.

My dad would leave at 4 or 5 in the morning and then I wouldn't see him until evening. The conversations we used to have, he would tell me, 'A man takes care of his home first. A man handles his responsibility. He doesn't ask another man for anything.'

Football was easy.

God gives you talent to nurture. God gives you talent to be something. Some people realize it and some people don't.

There's not many people - only really the great ones - who realize what they were born to do.

You don't hear about tradition in the NFL, but we have a tradition in Baltimore. It was just an awesome place to be.

There's only so many guys on a football team that really have a voice. So anytime you have a microphone, you should use it for the betterment of humanity, for the betterment of this country, for the betterment of our kids coming up behind us, for the future of the world. Why not? Make the world a better place.

We've got to help our community out. We've got to help Baltimore out, because it's a lot of things that have been handed down in our society that we're dealing with.

If the youth has a good foundation, then I think they won't grow into the bad situations they get into.

Not everybody likes Ed Reed.

I love Bill Belichick. He is a great coach, great man - raising men to do the right thing and win championships in this league.

We need more of our young youth graduating from college trying to get their education, and trying to be contributing members, positive contributing members to the community.

I tried to go and get my master's in-season. That's a tough cookie to try to eat, but it's just a great thing.

I know everybody wants to make it to the NFL, but it doesn't happen like that.

I was very proud to hear that my friend Andre Johnson was like, 'Man, I'm going back to school.' I was so excited because, yeah you have great talent. You do everything on Sundays, you do everything on the field, but you went to college, and I'm not saying that you forgot about it, but that was on your mind when you first went.