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On Sunday, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning will face each other for the 17th time with the winner heading to this year’s Super Bowl.  This is the greatest individual sporting rivalry of this generation.  Brady and Manning are also two of the best leaders in sporting history.

On the eve of their probable final matchup, I wanted to pull a number of leadership quotes from each quarterback from previous posts I have written.

And if you have not purchased it yet, click HERE or on the image above to purchase your copy of Gary Myers’s definitive work Brady vs. Manning: The Untold Story Of The Rivalry That Transformed The NFL.  It is an amazing book which gives a unique insight into the personal and professional relationship of two amazing leaders.

The following are 60 Leadership Quotes From Tom Brady And Peyton Manning:

Tom Brady

  1. “I was raised by a great mom and dad who support me.”
  2. “They love me unconditionally and I love them unconditionally.”
  3. “As a human you care what people think…As a public figure you learn not everyone’s going to like you.”
  4. “Some of the best motivation in life is trying to impress a girl.”
  5. “She’s a great wife and even better mom.”
  6. “It’s made me a better teammate.” – On having children
  7. “You have your priorities and you make your priorities.  My family is 1.  Then football is 1A.  When it’s family time, it’s family time.”
  8. “When I’m playing football, I’m nowhere else.  I’m in the present…How do you find balance?  You live in the present.”
  9. “You’re talking about some of the best athletes in the world playing a sport they’ve been playing a very long time with the best coaching, the best schemes, the best innovation, the best science.”
  10. “I don’t think about it much at all.” – On his legacy
  11. “It’s hard to keep a team together because the more you win, the more your guys are going to get paid.”
  12. “The thing that’s most important for me is to win.”
  13. “He’s very consistent.  He shows up to work everyday, his expectations the same.  He never lets up.  He coaches me the same way he coached me my second year.” – on head coach Bill Belichick
  14. “If he can yell at me, he can yell at anybody.”
  15. “I don’t put myself in a position where the coach has to use me as an example.”
  16. “They don’t care what you’ve done in the past.  They don’t care.  He doesn’t care.  The other players don’t care.  The owner doesn’t care.  The only person probably holding on to it is you.  None of that matters because if you want the best out of yourself, you have to keep pushing.”
  17. “I’m been really lucky to be a quarterback whose been in the same system.  We run plays in practice I’ve literally run a thousand times.”
  18. “What do I see when I come up to the line of scrimmage?  I see everything.”
  19. “If you trust your teammate is going to do his job, those are the best teammates to have.  It frees you up to be 100% focused on what you have to do.”
  20. “We practice so many times that at the point of execution, subconsciously 90% of it is already done.  So 100% of our brain can focus on the 10% of the adjustments.”
  21. “Why do I want to be the best?  I want to be the best for myself but I want to be the best for the guys I play with too cause it’s not about me.  It’s their journey too and I’m part of their journey.  And why can’t I do everything I can to help them out to.”
  22. “Part of being a quarterback, part of being a leader is being on the field…Never give another quarterback a chance.”
  23. “To me what separates really good players from great players – executive well under pressure.  The biggest game.  The biggest stage.  That’s what playing quarterback is all about.”
  24. “Every year has its challenges in different ways…You always got to work on something.”
  25. “That’s the difference between a rookie year and a second year. Guys have done it, proved it, and now you have confidence going into the next season that we’re actually good at some things. And those are the things you want to build on. “
  26. “Everyone’s always in the middle and you really don’t know what kind of team you are until November or December when the mental toughness of the team, the discipline, the work ethic of the team has taken ahold.”
  27. “The most important one (year of your career) is this year, because that’s all we have.”
  28. “A lot of luck and a lot of great education from some really important people in my life that have taught me how to take care of myself, how to prepare myself mentally and physically for what we’re up against. It’s probably not what a lot of people do. It’s probably not the norm for most players. But it’s what’s worked for me.” – on keeping a high level of commitment
  29. “I made a commitment to myself because I love the game; I want to play for a long time. There’s nothing else I’d rather do. I make a commitment in the season and the offseason to do that. It’s a fun thing for me. It’s not like working out is a very hard thing, coming out and playing football in the middle of May is a hard thing. I love doing it.”
  30. “You get hurt. They cart you off. They blow the whistle. The game continues.”

Peyton Manning

  1. “You better be prepared to be game changers or you will be left in the dust.”
  2. “Anyone who waits for someone else to initiate change automatically becomes a follower.”
  3. “Every leader needs to master the intense conversations.”
  4. “Decision-making is the currency to becoming a good leader.”
  5. “I faced monumental decisions long before I was ready. But how you deal with ambiguity determines how you do everything else.”
  6. “Nobody cares about what a player did last year.”
  7. “Every leader needs people who will shoot straight with them.”
  8. “The quarterback is expected to lead a team of fearless, talented multi-millionaires.”
  9. “If you ever get into the huddle, you be the leader and you take control of that huddle.”
  10. “People, organizations have become too comfortable. Lazy. Unimaginative. Launching old ideas.”
  11. “Learn to thrive on being uncomfortable.”
  12. “Invest in a coach.”
  13. “It doesn’t matter how seasoned any of us are. We all need a coach. “
  14. “I want to be coached. I get angry when I’m not coached.”
  15. “As soon as someone stops learning to be coached, they’re in big trouble.”
  16. “As a leader, delivering help trumps offering hope any day of the week.”
  17. “Bravely adjust to realities.”
  18. Leaders cannot afford to allow changes to drag them down. They need to be stimulated by the changes.”
  19. “Every year I set individual goals which I think will affect team success.”
  20. “No one can lead without people to follow.”
  21. “You’re going to receive a lot of criticism, most of it unsolicited.”
  22. “A veteran employee doesn’t want to hear what a rookie employee wants to hear until you have earned their respect.”
  23. “I got up from every hit.”
  24. “You earn respect by working, not by talking.”
  25. “It’s all about finishing. Halftime, you got to be careful. Don’t get comfortable.”
  26. “I’ve always thought the NFL doesn’t owe you anything.  Nothing is given.  You have to go out there and earn it.”
  27. “That theory of 10,000 repetitions.  I passed that a long time ago.”
  28. “It’s not embarrassing at all.  I never use that word.  There is a lot of professional football players in that locker room who put a lot of hard work and effort into it, to begin here (Super Bowl XLVIII) and play in that game.  The word embarrassing is an insulting word.”
  29. “I would rather be in the arena to be excited or disappointed than not have a chance at all.  That’s football.  That’s why everybody plays it.  You have to take the good with the bad.”
  30. “In life and in sports, we all know that nothing lasts forever.  Times change, circumstances change, and that’s the reality of playing in the NFL.”

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