A biography for Morten Andersenhasn’t been written yet.
“For the longest time, I thought 'my bad' was 'my bag.' I'd say, 'My bag' and no one would say anything.”
“I landed in Indianapolis on my 17th birthday. There to greet me was my new American family, the Bakers. I had barely blown out the candles on my birthday cake before the question came, 'So, do you want to go watch a football game? We need a kicker.'”
“I had a one-kick mentality. I had a saying: 'when a kick leaves the foot it leaves the mind.' Mind you, easier said than done.”
“I get extremely homesick.”
“For some reason the kicker position has the stigma of 'we can go to the bar and get another guy.'”
“I do mental training throughout the week. I take myself through specific game situations so when they come up I've rehearsed them.”
“The safe bet would have been to say, 'I'm just going to stay in Denmark,' but I don't think that was ever really in the DNA of our family to play the card that was always comfortable and safe.”
“I make sure to talk to my parents and brother once a week. I have to keep up my Danish. Phoning is easy, a quick fix.”
“Performance feedback is important.”
“I was really involved with school and activities during my time at Ben Davis. I was at that place 12 hours a day, five days a week. It was the center of my life. It's the place where I got my start in America, and the people in Indiana were so friendly.”
“In Denmark it's dark half the time so we don't age as fast.”
“When the game's on the line, I want to be out there, deciding it.”
“Is the Pro Football Hall of Fame important to players to feel they belong? Of course it is. It's the pinnacle but it doesn't define me and I don't lose sleep over it and I can't control that anyway.”
“The challenge, every year, when March came around and the new offseason started, was to plug yourself into the routine and understand that it's a marathon and that you have to really work hard in March, April, May, June, July and August to be ready for the regular season.”
“I'm just very fortunate that Bum Phillips gave me a chance to stay around for a couple years.”
“I'm trying to leave a legacy.”
“My mom and dad encouraged my brother and I to travel and broaden our horizons.”
“It's tougher, obviously, to kick in the wind and the rain.”
“There were many, many moving parts to my preparation. I think one of the reasons that I had a fair amount of success in some perceived high-pressure situations is because I was well-prepared.”
“I had never played in front of 10,000 people in my life, coming from a little village in western Denmark. We might have 20 people watching a soccer game or maybe a hundred people watching a team handball game on the select team.”