I was raised to believe that New England is the best place on the planet.
Coming from a small South Dakota school, it was a different route to get to the NFL. I went from South Dakota State to the World League of American Football with the Amsterdam Admirals, and fortunately I did well enough there that the New England Patriots decided to sign me and give me a chance.
I mean, if I was going to leave New England, it wasn't going to be just for the sake of leaving.
People tell me that I am well-grounded. I am sane in the New England sense of the word.
From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England, he had a Spartan struggle for life.
We should have scant notion of the gardens of these New England colonists in the seventeenth century were it not for a cheerful traveller named John Josselyn, a man of everyday tastes and much inquisitiveness, and the pleasing literary style which comes from directness, and an absence of self-consciousness.
Few of the early houses in New England were painted, or colored, as it was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of the early lists of workmen.
In the early New England meeting-houses the seats were long, narrow, uncomfortable benches, which were made of simple, rough, hand-riven planks placed on legs like milking-stools.
I think the one commonality between the two Super Bowl teams I've been on is great, great teammates. I can honestly say that guys in Philly could definitely thrive in New England and vice versa - if you throw out the scheme differences.
In New England, I learned so much about football. I always thought I was a smart player, even though I never thought about anything but the six inches in front of my face. In New England, I was forced to learn so many schematic concepts.
