Nnamdi Asomugha

“You walk into a room and there's already judgment. You know, like football players can't act or you're going to come in and be stiff.”

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

“I'll be relentless in my efforts to be great, but I'm realistic. I know I can't be perfect because I've seen it. But at the same time, nobody wants to fail, nobody wants to fail.”

“I'm one of the guys that thinks you have to spend a lot of time at whatever your craft is in order to sustain it, and in order to get better at it.”

“Anybody can be beaten by one pass once. Are you getting beat by that same pass multiple times in the same game? That answer is no.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If we're in a scene together, I want to give you something that allows your performance to be truthful. In football, if you're opposite me, I want to destroy you, take your head off. I'm still reading body language, still reacting, still trusting my instincts - same as football - but it's different now.”

“It doesn't matter how well you play individually if the team isn't winning.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“In great Al Davis fashion, he took a reach that he believed in and instilled confidence in me like nobody else could. I was able to become all that he expected of me.”

“When it's football time, that's where I am - the studying, the working, the practicing, everything.”

“I know that a lot of times when a guy is making a lot of money and he's not playing up to that caliber, it's like he's just getting his paycheck. That's never been me. That's never, ever been me.”

“When I was a kid, my aunt snuck us into see 'Boyz n the Hood.'”

“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've always felt that I'm successful for a reason - so I can help, whether that's one individual or a group of people. That's why I keep going with football. I love the game and I'll keep playing as long as I can, but ultimately there's a different purpose.”

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