Defensive Back Quotes & Sayings

We got to stop people. We go ahead and we score 100 points every night, but we give up more. Our whole thing was, we know we can score, and we have to start having some kind of fun on the defensive end. Everybody want to play offense. Not too many people want to play defense. Defense is ego, pride, and that's the way we've been coming out, just taking the challenge. Man-on-man first, and having each other's back when a guy gets beat. — Allen Iverson

Landry returned to school following the war and played fullback and defensive back for the Longhorn squads that won the 1948 Sugar Bowl and, his senior year, the 1949 Orange Bowl. — Jeff Pearlman

Chess is a very positive way to exercise your mind. It makes you look at the whole picture ... what are your options and what is the best thing to do? In football, you are mostly reacting from a defensive point of view ... but you always want to be counterattacking ... a similarity with chess strategy. Chess and offensive football are quite similar; you sacrifice something now to get something back later. — Barney Chavous

The American School of Paris is one of those strange places in foreign cities where expatriates huddle together in a defensive circle and try to pretend they're still back at home.
I saw it as a place for lost souls. — Amy Plum

Camouflage with a defensive grace and bounce back with joy. — Angelica Hopes

I really have to be watching my back all the time; always be on the defensive? Trusting no one but myself was a cold cross to bear, but at that moment, I wore it. — Courtney Giardina

The positions I played in football, being a quarterback and a defensive back, you had to kind of have a little independent thinking. — Hale Irwin

But if you parry individuals points - a negative and defensive enterprise - you never step back and actively imagine a world in which a different system of ideas could be true - a positive act. — Deborah Tannen

Suddenly it felt as if there was a whole heck of a lot less oxygen in the room than there'd been only a moment before, which had to explain why she'd melted into him when she hadn't meant to. She tossed back her head to say something defensive, but the look on his face stopped her. — Jill Shalvis

The U.K. and the U.S. could not have been built today without Africa's aid. It is all the resources that were taken from Africa, including human, that built these countries today! So when they try to give back, we shouldn't be on the defensive. — Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

[Li Ch'uan cites the case of Fu Chien, prince of Ch'in, who in 383 A.D. marched with a vast army against the Chin Emperor. When warned not to despise an enemy who could command the services of such men as Hsieh An and Huan Ch'ung, he boastfully replied: "I have the population of eight provinces at my back, infantry and horsemen to the number of one million; why, they could dam up the Yangtsze River itself by merely throwing their whips into the stream. What danger have I to fear?" Nevertheless, his forces were soon after disastrously routed at the Fei River, and he was obliged to beat a hasty retreat.] If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. [Chang Yu said: "Knowing the enemy enables you to take the offensive, knowing yourself enables you to stand on the defensive." He adds: "Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack." It would be hard to find a better epitome of the root-principle of war.] — Sun Tzu

I think it comes from far away inside me, to be strong to survive everything that comes my way. I think, going back to the beginning, feeling like an alien in an English school when I was eight, that set up my pride very early on. I think I'm very defensive, but I'm trying not to be like that anymore. — Maggie Cheung

It is important you understand how fear affects you and how it drives human behavior so you can start to see situations and people accurately and respond more appropriately. When someone is behaving badly, attacking you, or being defensive, critical, or judgmental, it is not really about you. Fear is the real reason people behave badly. Their fears make them selfish, defensive, mean, and grouchy. Every time someone is behaving badly, step back and ask yourself, "What is this person afraid of? What fear inside me is driving my reaction to their attack? What am I afraid of?"
When you can accurately see the fear behind their behavior, and yours, you will see the situation for what it really is. — Kimberly Giles

Among mountains there are everywhere numerous positions extremely strong by nature, which you should abstain from attacking. The genius of this kind of war consists in occupying camps either on the flank or the rear of the enemy, So as to leave him no alternative but to withdraw from his position without fighting; and to move him farther back, or to make him come out and attack you. In mountain war the attacking party acts under a disadvantage. Even in offensive war, the merit lies in having only defensive conflicts and obliging your enemy to become the assailant. — Napoleon Bonaparte

What are you doing out here this late?" A frown pulls at his mouth. "It's one in the morning."
"Me?" I walk across the lawn slowly, still not fully trusting. "What are you doing here?" And no, I don't believe he had just been driving by. "Are you stalking me?" Hunting me? I want to add.
He blinks. Some of the tension carving his face loosens then. Replaced with something else. He rubs at the back of his neck. The move is self-conscious. Innately human. Embarrassed.
"I - "
"You are," I pronounce, an unbidden smile coming to my mouth.
"Look," he grumbles, his eyes angry. Defensive. "I just wanted to see where you live."
I stop before him. "Why?"
He rubs the back of his neck again, this time the motion is savage, annoyed. With me or himself, I'm not sure. — Sophie Jordan

Well, I'm going to try. Better to practice on somebody else's kid first."

"Before what?" he asked, cautiously.

"I was just joking." Suddenly, I felt very defensive.

"You're sure your pill is working, right?"

"Yes! Don't worry, If I ever wanted to have a baby it doesn't have to be with you," I said, sensing rejection and fighting back.

"Well, who in the hell would it be with?" he asked, sounding irate.

"I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball."

"I've got news for you, Lilith. If you're going to be bearing anyone's children, they'll be mine," he said heatedly. Suddenly, the baby started crying.

"Now look what you did," I chastised. "You made him cry."

"I didn't make him cry. A shitty diaper made him cry. Now you want to take this on, I'll take it on with you. Bring him over here," Adam demanded, storming off with the diaper bag. — N.M. Silber

Night Train Lane was the best defensive back to ever play the game. I tried to pattern my game after him because he was the best. He could have played any one of the four (secondary) positions. I've never seen a defensive back hit the way he hit - I mean take them down, whether it be Jim Taylor or Jim Brown. — Herb Adderley

One of the turning points in the look of the Guardian is when we decided Logan Thackeray would be a Guardian as opposed to a Warrior. Logan's own protective nature and the fact that the humans have been knocked back into defensive positions informed a lot of what the Guardian became. — Jeff Grubb

The two biggest things to understand when you're tracking the ball as a defensive back is your position on the field and understanding that once the ball is in the air you become the receiver. Too many young defensive backs worry about the receiver catching it or what the receiver is doing instead of focusing on what they should be doing. Just go out and make the play yourself, don't worry about him. Know where the ball is and attack it. Put yourself in position to bat it or catch it and make the play. — Antonio Cromartie

I like using one QB. If we have two that are relatively equal, then we can't afford to have one on the bench. They need to be on the field at running back, receiver or defensive back. I'm not going to waste an athlete on the sidelines. — Alan Chadwick

The presumption took hold and grew ever firmer that it was the business of government to find solutions to all such problems. Any minister who sought to say that there was nothing that he could or should try to do about them was at once forced on to his defensive back foot by media and parliamentary pressure. At the same time, more citizens were ready to complain about the shortcomings of existing services, and more numerous and competent pressure groups, like the claimants' unions I had come across in supplementary benefits, arose to pursue their complaints. To cap it all, the courts began, and went on to widen, the practice of subjecting the administrative decisions of ministers to judicial review. No wonder that the ministers themselves, also wilting (as their American and French counterparts were not) under the pressures of increasing parliamentary business, found themselves in difficulties. — Richard Wilding

You can always look back on having a good defensive day, even if you didn't do anything offensively. You won the game and you contributed. — Jorge Posada

This is the enemy, what is irreversible, what has already reached the farthest of places. There is no going back. They can bomb bus-loads of tourists, burn the American flag, but they are not shooting the enemy. It is already with them, inside them, what makes them resentful, defensive, what makes them no longer confident of their vision of the world. — Leila Aboulela

What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry," Paul intoned. "This doltish Gurney Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and shielded." Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. "In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack," Paul said. "Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!" Paul snapped up the rapier, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed to enter a shield's mindless defenses. — Frank Herbert

Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later, too often on the back foot. — John Major

I grinned at him. 'Jealous?'
He grinned right back. 'That's a trick question. If I say yes you'll accuse me of being paranoid and unreasonable, and if I say no you'll make some defensive crack about how I don't think you're worth getting jealous over.'
This is what I got for hooking up with a lawyer. — Carrie Vaughn

Now listen, Gunnar," Cara is saying, "Jon told me you thought you needed to move out, but you don't have to, you know. It's not a big deal. Plus, we'll be engaged for a while before we actually get married so it's not - "
"Actually, Vance asked me to move in with him," Gunnar says, going for casual and missing it by a mile.
Cara steps back, eyebrows raised, "Wanna run that by me again?"
"Vance. He asked me to move in with him."
"And you said?"
"I said yes."
Cara lets out a shriek that sends Jon and Gunnar into a defensive crouch. "That's. Well that's fantastic, Gunnar. I didn't think you had it in you!"
"Oh, thanks so much," Gunnar says (although to be fair, even he didn't think he had it in him). — Seventhswan

It was fun, having speed and being able to jump. Especially playing football. I played wide receiver and defensive back. — Jacoby Ellsbury

Here's my philosophy. Adopt it, and you'll make it out alive. Every man for himself. You watch your own ass. Your con goes orange? You fall back to defensive position. No heroics. And no stupidity. Got it? — Eve Silver

Deep Throat stamped his foot. 'A conspiracy like this ... a conspiracy investigation ... the rope has to tighten slowly around everyone's neck. You build convincingly from the outer edges in, you get ten times the evidence you need against the Hunts and the Liddys. They feel hopelessly finished - they may not talk right away, but the grip is on them. Then you move up and do the same thing at the next level. If you shoot too high and miss, the everyone feels more secure. Lawyers work this way. I'm sure smart reporters must, too. You've put the investigation back months. It puts everyone on the defensive - editors, FBI agents, everybody has to go into a crouch after this.'
Woodward swallowed hard. He deserved the lecture.
Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

Vic Wertz once hit a ball rather famously that was later described as such: 'It would have been a home run in any other park - including Yellowstone.' Instead, he's remembered as the guy who got robbed by Willie Mays' spectacular catch during the 1954 World Series between the Indians and the Giants, a play that remains one of the game's all-time greatest defensive efforts. What people often forget about Wertz is that his greatest battle wasn't that one at bat, and that one out never defined his career. He was stricken with polio in 1955, and after 74 games his season was over and his career was hanging in the balance. 'The Catch' by Willie Mays couldn't keep him down, and neither could polio - he came back in 1956, and despite playing in only 136 games he belted 32 home runs with 106 RBIs. — Tucker Elliot

I think that it definitely makes the transition easier being able to know linebacker and having also played on the defensive line. You can kind of know what they're expecting on the back end and what you are kind of expecting from them. — Justin Cole

Probably the most important aspect of individual defensive play is the 'close-out.' This approach to the ball should be made in a 'step-drag action' with advanced foot moving forward first and then the back foot in a boxer's type shuffling of the feet. — Tex Winter

The Berlin Defence suited my strategy for the match. I had a defensive strategy - Actually, I had in my pocket some other sharper stuff to fall back on - but first I wanted to try the defensive strategy with Black and it worked so well. — Vladimir Kramnik

But good writers have a reason for doing things the way they do them, and if you tinker with their work, taking it upon yourself to neutralize a slightly eccentric usage or zap a comma or sharpen the emphasis of something that the writer was deliberately keeping obscure, you are not helping. In my experience, the really great writers enjoy the editorial process. They weigh queries, and they accept or reject them for good reasons. They are not defensive. The whole point of having things read before publication is to test their effect on a general reader. You want to make sure when you go out there that the tag on the back of your collar isn't poking up - unless, of course, you are deliberately wearing your clothes inside out. — Mary Norris

He wants to play major college football at a university far away, where nobody will know about his tragic family history. Then he wants to play in the NFL.

Every catch brings him closer to that reality. That's how he thinks of it, anyway. Every time he runs downfield, sees the ball in the air, and hears the defensive back laboring to catch up, whenever he feels that ball fall out of the sky and into his waiting hands, he inches closer to his goals. — Neil Hayes