Gil Brandt Quotations

We've added interviews. We've added interviews on tape. We've added workout tapes that are available to all teams. It's like we've gone from a one-story motel in a small town in Montana to the Sears Tower. It's bigger and more elaborate.

What happens when you play both is that it makes opponents dilute their prep time, ... Before, they knew they'd be going up against a 4-3 or a 3-4 exclusively. Now they have to prepare to play against both.

When you say 47 percent out of the first 10 picks made the Hall of Fame, that's a high percentage.

Leaf got the big contract and that was his utopia - he didn't want to work for anything else. That's what makes this so hard: You don't know how guys are going to respond to financial success, if they will still work hard. If you knew that, you wouldn't have so many busts.

So hard to tell when you're looking at a player. You just don't know the competition.

Mommas, let your babies grow up to be left tackles.

McNair was less risky than Young probably, but I also think that Young has more upside than McNair. McNair was probably more advanced because of the system that they used (at Alcorn). Young is a little more athletic and probably a little faster than McNair was, and with Young you've got a guy that has unbelievable potential.

No disrespect to the college coaches, but we can do so many more things than they can do.

Maybe, but you have to be able to convince your players that it's harder to get back there the second time. What happens is, during the off-season, the players all of a sudden are in more demand than ever before. They're invited to more golf tournaments, they make more appearances and, all of a sudden, instead of doing all the work in the off-season program, they start missing a few days and they're not as into it the same way they were prior to the year when they got there.

No one wants the blame for the bad decisions and everybody fights for the credit on the good decisions, ... When you need a consensus, what happens is maybe this year I side with you and the next year I side with another guy to balance things out. That's not making the best decision for the franchise.

Obviously, there had to be a better way to do it than that. So that's kind of how it started.

Cedric Griffin, he's going to surprise some people in the draft,

But the three most important positions on a team are the quarterback, the left tackle and the pass rushing end.

I don't think we should call him a franchise quarterback yet. He's a good quarterback.

He's got tremendous quickness, and that's the key ingredient to the success of a running back. And he's got good vision as a runner.

He impressed everyone with his arm strength, quick delivery and accuracy. Young made great strides today.

He'll make an impact, ... It will get bigger and better as he goes along. But this is not a very good team. What you saw against Denver was probably not realistic.

Hawk is a special guy. He's a throwback to an old-time football player and just a quality individual.

He's a Deion Sanders -type athlete. It seems like this guy can do everything, just like Deion did.

He's a lot like (Tom) Landry. He went through the same thing. He got all the good players but didn't win the big one. That's tough to live with, and I think it had taken its toll on Mack.

Historically we do not draft safeties high. So many guys that stay that extra year bear out so much better.

When they go to Indy and blow you away, they go up. And, to be quite honest, if they don't do well, they're going to drop.

He was kind of the backbone of our Doomsday defenses. He kind of coached like he played. He was a hard-working, hard-trying individual who had a lot of patience in developing young players. He was easy-going and well-liked. The thing with him was that he made everybody feel at home.

He was a fun-loving Austrian. ...He was well liked by the players because he went out and drank beer with them.

He didn't work out like a tight end would work out, but he worked out like a defensive or offensive lineman. He's an intriguing guy, a good guy to look at.

He chose not to come because he had a paper due the following Monday. The guy has pretty good study habits.

He just looks good. He looked accurate, threw the ball well, moved well. I think he was the biggest surprise there coming off this year, which was not the best.

I think sometimes, when you're close to somebody, you might overvalue a person. And I'm close to Young. But I've seen what the guy has done. I just think he's a pretty special player.

I think every situation is different. It depends on what that particular team is looking for, what side of the ball it needs help.

Really? I think for a long time they probably didn't have a quarterback because they were a wishbone team.

My thoughts are that he did such a great job of developing young players, defensive linemen like Ed Jones, Randy White and Harvey Martin, and was kind of the unsung hero of our defense.

I think he has the ability to play much better than he has been. This is another guy who has to understand that he's now moving up a class.

That surprised me. When you look at him (on film) his man never makes a play.

I would imagine they are getting a reputation as a passing team. And Texas has a reputation now that they can go out and get anybody.

You can have the talent at one level, but when you get to the next level, it just doesn't happen. It's like the young guy selling insurance. One year, he sells $6 million of life insurance, and then his bosses say, 'Wait until he really learns how to sell.' But then he's got a boat and a country-club membership, and all of a sudden, he's not as good. That's what happens with players.

Usually they're in the ballpark. Seldom do you have a third-round grade and the guy is picked in the first, and seldom do you have a second-round grade and he's picked in the sixth.

Two years from now, after he's finished his (college) career, I don't think there's any question that this guy's a first-rounder. And I don't think there's any question that he'll be an impact player.

(Tom) Landry and I talked about it one time and he didn't know whether it was true either. I think it was a mystery because there's a great deal of pride between both Lamar and Clint.

When you look at the last three games he played at Michigan, you swear this is the No. 1 overall pick. He's got everything you need ? arm strength, mobility, he's bright. But for some reason, he doesn't seem to put it all together. I don't understand it.

This was in the late 1950s, and we held the draft in Philadelphia because that's where the commissioner, Bert Bell, had his office.

We just don't have the Butkuses, we don't have the Nitschkes. We don't have those kinds of guys playing linebacker anymore.

Competitiveness is the most important aspect and that's sometimes hard to test. The only measurement you can use at all is something that's relevant to the position he plays. We spend a lot of time and money measuring things that have no relevance to what a player will do.

There's nobody close to that Texas streak. And if not for one lost year there, Ohio State would have a perfect record, too.

The things that make a good punt returner or kick returner is if you have really quick acceleration and can change directions real well. (Lions receiver) Roy Williams is one of the fastest, and he's just like Roy. He's full speed in one step.

Ronnie Brown is a really good football player, a wonderful guy and a talented player, ... A lot of times, players have an advantage of playing with a team that has more offensive weapons. I would think right now, if the spots were changed, Ronnie Brown would be doing what Cadillac is doing.

That shows the quality of their program. Very seldom do you even have one player who starts as a rookie.

You see who's going to work and who isn't. You see who's jumping to the head of the line in drills. You watch up close, then go back to the (hotel) and talk to them.

This guy had been a soccer coach in the Balkans. He was saying how these athletes in Europe could kick a ball 80 meters.

They missed the boat initially, but the guys have made up lost ground. They went from being not the greatest to very efficient.

They got the right man, I'll say that. They're not far away.

There were other places we could have done it, but (the RCA Dome and Indiana Convention Center) have always given us the dates.

They're all pretty good players, but they aren't great players. That tells you Mack Brown is a pretty good coach, because they were able to win a national championship with just two guys who will be picked in the first round.

It's like a golf tournament where a bunch of guys are 10 handicappers and a few guys are zero handicappers. Thomas is a zero handicapper.

It's almost like in horse racing, ... when you drop a horse down in class they win.

Everybody likes ice cream. People like different flavors.

It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen, ... A linebacker for the Cardinals was hollering, 'Choke, Fritsch, choke!' and Dave Edwards, our upback on the protection team, said, 'He can't understand English.'

They both have a truckload of players, and very good underclass players. The mother lode is at both places.

Shaw was a forerunner of these workout programs. He's highly recommended by a lot of people. His program gets an athlete to do the best he can possibly do and to be prepared for the combine.

That's a huge difference. I mean, millions of dollars.

I'm afraid he's in for a crushed ego.

I'm sure people have a place in mind for him. But I don't know what that is.

In my evaluation of the guy, I think he has really good mechanics and good velocity on the ball, which is a big thing when you play in a stadium that has a lot of wind like (the Jets) do. I think it was a good pick. I'd be really surprised if he doesn't end up being a pretty good player for them.

If you go back to last year, he lined up on Mark Clayton of Oklahoma and he limited Clayton to three short passes against him, ... I think this guy can play corner in the NFL. He can play safety. He can play the nickel corner, and he's got good character.

I haven't heard any concern from anybody. He's made a remarkable recovery for a guy that had the problems he did.

If you want to go by past history say who is the safest guy, the safest pick is an established left tackle like this guy.

He's the fastest tight end I've ever seen. I knew he was fast, but I thought he'd run a 4.55 or something like that. It's amazing, especially at that weight.

I don't think being too smart can ever hurt you. All you have to look at is what kind of competitor he is. This guy is one of the great competitors of all time.

He's got a special talent, whether he's skiing black diamonds, or running back kicks.

How much does a baker make in Sweden?

Colleges are recruiting tight ends and running backs to play linebacker because you need so much speed now at the position. There are some good ones that will soon be coming out of college. There are signs that it's coming around, but right now there's no question that the true linebacker, like Butkus and Nitschke, are almost extinct.

This is a classic case of a guy who could have stayed in school and helped himself by working on his delivery.

You've got a captive audience of all 32 teams, and that's something you don't have at (an on-campus session). If you do well here, there are a lot of people who take notice.

The first place we went was Vienna, and the first player we tried out was Toni Fritsch. He had a hard time speaking English at first, but he did master it.

The medical part is paramount. It becomes more and more paramount every day, because the bonuses keep going up, and nobody wants to draft somebody who can't pass the physical.