Nnamdi Asomugha

“I'm highly critical of myself. There's not something someone else might say that makes me feel I need to be motivated in a different way. I'm a self-motivated guy.”

“There's a drive, there's a hunger inside of me that says, 'I know what I can do and I'm going to get it done.'”

“I'm really bad at self-promotion.”

“I get friends that ask that all the time, and I remember my mother asking me a couple of times, because there was no action during a game, 'did you play?' It's so weird. Everybody's like, 'Great game, great game.' And because I demand so much of myself, I'm like, 'Well, I didn't do that great, because I didn't have any stats.'”

“It's a difficult thing in this league to match up, to line up and play one-on-one football.”

“I think any time you're able to humanize the plight of the wrongfully incarcerated, then you're doing your job.”

“I didn't have the luxury of going to the four year school for acting.”

“I was always the person who would make the mistake. I was the one who would get suspended from school.”

“I help receivers on my team every now and then, but I'm slow to do even that because they could end up my opponent the following year.”

“Oh man, you miss it so much when you finish playing, especially when you play for most of your life. You miss just being a part of a team and being a part of the guys. So I definitely think producing brought that back for me. A bunch of people working together for a common goal.”

“From what I came from, all the negative criticism - that keeps me from embracing that title of being the best. Because I always feel like there is another level I have to get to.”

“I was maybe halfway through my career, and I was shooting a Nike commercial, and the director came to the trailer and said, 'Hey man, you're really gifted at this. I get a lot of athletes that come in, but you were prepared, and you made everything seem very natural. I really think you should look into this.'”

“When I hear about a player losing his money, I'll rarely, if ever, point a finger at the player because I know how difficult it is. It's not always, 'Look at this idiot who got paid all these millions of dollars and lost it all.' It may be more like, 'This naive kid with a million things going on in his life put his faith in the wrong people.'”

“I've been blessed. I've had a fortunate, successful career in the NFL. It's been longer than I initially expected when I came into the NFL.”

“My freshman year, I started working with a group called Touchdown for Kids.”

“You always want that as a player, to have that guy on the other side of you that's equally as talented and can make plays. It fuels you a little bit.”

“You know in acting you have those moments in a movie where a character yells or breaks down crying and you're like, wow, that's acting?”

“I know so many people who've been through situations where they've gone from one career to another and have had such a tough time because they didn't have any support doing it.”

“Luckily enough for me I reached a level in the game where no one questioned my work ethic or my ability and then I was like, I don't care. Every off-season I might do a scene in a TV show or something just to keep that going.”

“When a team wants you, you can feel it.”