Top 60 John Madden Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.”

— John Madden

2. “Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.”

— John Madden

3. “The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.”

— John Madden

4. “You can’t win a game if you don’t score any points.”

— John Madden

5. “If the quarterback throws the ball in the endzone and the wide receiver catches it, it’s a touchdown.”

— John Madden

6. “Don’t do anything great if you can’t handle the congratulations.”

— John Madden

7. “Here’s a guy who when he runs, he moves faster.”

— John Madden

8. “Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear.”

— John Madden

9. “I get a certain feeling when I go to Lambeau field in Green Bay. Soldier field in Chicago is special to me. Those are the places that I really like. The stadiums.”

— John Madden

10. “When you have great players, playing great, well that’s great football!”

— John Madden

11. “Nothing jazzes me up like football. I’ve acquired more passion of the years, not less. Not to love it wouldn’t make sense.”

— John Madden

12. “He got up looking out of his earhole!”

— John Madden

13. “The defense should be expecting a run or a pass here.”

— John Madden

14. “Mark Brunell usually likes to soak his balls before a rainy game.”

— John Madden

15. “I’ve always said winning’s the great deodorant, and conversely, when you have a bad record – everything stinks – and everything starts to unravel, and everything falls apart.”

— John Madden

16. “The best way to gain more yards is advance the ball down the field from the line of scrimmage.”

— John Madden

17. “Some yards is better than none yards?”

— John Madden

18. “There’s a lot of letters in Ladanian Tomlinson.”

— John Madden

19. “Here’s a guy who can use his arms and legs at the same time.”

— John Madden

20. “Playing in this nice weather really makes me remember all the times I got stung by a bee.”

— John Madden

21. “The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.”

— John Madden

22. “I always used to tell my players that we are here to win! And you know what, Al? When you don’t win, you lose.”

— John Madden

23. “Give something that wasn’t expected.”

— John Madden

24. “I’m sure that had I not been a coach, I would have been some form of a teacher.”

— John Madden

25. “Never mind the horse’s blind, just load the wagon.”

— John Madden

26. “I would have all my offensive linemen wrestle if I could.”

— John Madden

27. “Boom, boom, foom, poom! He just ran right at ’em!”

— John Madden

28. “You got one guy going boom, one guy going whack, and one guy not getting in the endzone.”

— John Madden

29. “Discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it. Discipline is knowing what you’re supposed to do and doing it as best you can.”

— John Madden

30. “From the waist down, Earl Campbell has the biggest legs I have ever seen on a running back.”

— John Madden

31. “If you think about it, I’ve never held a job in my life. I went from being an NFL player to a coach to a broadcaster. I haven’t worked a day in my life.”

— John Madden

32. “Winning is a great deodorant.”

— John Madden

33. “I’d like to work with kids in special education – younger kids.”

— John Madden

34. “When its raining the field gets wet, then all of a sudden everyones running slower.”

— John Madden

35. “There is a difference in being in shape and being in football shape. Any one can out on the field and run around, but once you start getting hit and have to get up then you find out the difference between being in shape and football shape.”

— John Madden

36. “The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.”

— John Madden

37. “If a guy doesn’t work hard and doesn’t play well, he can’t lead anything. All he is, is a talker.”

— John Madden

38. “If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they’ve had a bad day.”

— John Madden

39. “That’s the biggest gap in sports, the difference between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl.”

— John Madden

40. “In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.”

— John Madden

41. “Well, when you’re playing good football, it’s good football and if you don’t have good football, then you’re not really playing good football.”

— John Madden

42. “Whenever you talk about a Mike Shanahan offense, you’re always going to be talking about his offense.”

— John Madden

43. “He would have scored a touchdown if he hadn’t been tackled right there.”

— John Madden

44. “The best feeling is watching a real football game, because the games they show in the movies aren’t real.”

— John Madden

45. “See, well ya see, the thing is, he should have caught that ball. But the ball is bigger than his hands.”

— John Madden

46. “Usually, the team that turns the ball over less will hold on to the ball more.”

— John Madden

47. “If someone remembers me as a coach, they still call me ‘Coach,’ but if they know me for the video game, they just call me ‘Madden.’”

— John Madden

48. “I think comparisons are odious.”

— John Madden

49. “The greatest gap in sports is between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl. The winner has confetti, parades, rings, the whole thing. The loser puts his head down and goes to his house.”

— John Madden

50. “He might want to watch where he lands when tackling that guy, because he could really hurt his hand if it gets stepped on.”

— John Madden