These are excerpts. To read the whole interview click the link below. It's a long interview but a good read on the mindset of an NFL player in the trenches. Pretty certain he will hear from Roger Goodell because Suggs tears into him as well.
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http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...letting-a-changing-nfl-change-him?share=other
'I Signed Up for This': Terrell Suggs Isn't Letting a Changing NFL Change Him
TYLER DUNNE
Associated Press
Enthusiastically. You can hear the fire.
And see it, in the scowl when you mention the word "Steelers." That rivalry is Tarantino-like to Suggs—because the trash talk wasn't restricted to pillow fights on Twitter. No, he remembers real meet-me-in-the-alley threats.
"We're going to talk s--t. We're going to back it up," Suggs says. "We might get into a fight while we're doing something. You know what I'm saying. It was personal. It was personal. We wanted to
kill Hines Ward. I had to threaten him before every play like, 'If you crack me, I swear to God I'm going to break your f--king neck.'"
Ward was a villain in their eyes, a coward who'd crack back on unsuspecting linebackers. After one of Suggs' many warnings, he still blindsided Bart Scott. Ward would've tagged Suggs, too, if Suggs didn't dodge him at the last split-second. After Ward broke the jaw of Cincinnati's Keith Rivers, Suggs' threats sharpened.
"I swear to God, if you hit me like that, I'm getting thrown out of the f--king league," he remembers telling Ward. He meant it. Ward knew he meant it. And Ward
still tried teeing off.
Suggs shakes his head.
Part of him respects Ward, because, damn it, "you'd love a tough motherf--ker like that on your team." Players like that shaped Suggs. Fed a ruthlessness.
One other rival comes to his mind: Kellen Winslow Jr. The ex-Browns tight end used to waltz through the Ravens' pregame stretch and shout, "None of you motherf--kers are going to cover me!" which promptly made Suggs and Scott erupt and nearly get tossed. "Kellen Winslow, if I ever catch this motherf--ker coming across the window, I'm going to kill him," Suggs says, past and present blending as he speaks.
Of course, no player shaped him more than two former teammates who were among the greatest defensive players in NFL history. Nothing—literally nothing—meant more to Ray Lewis and Ed Reed than football. Lewis attacked every second of every day as if it was the Super Bowl, Suggs raves, while Reed possessed the greatest football "brain" he's ever seen. He was a genius. During the Ravens' third-down meetings, coaches weren't allowed in. Lewis and Reed ran the show.
They'd eat, sleep, breathe the game in a way no one does today.
"They took it home with them," Suggs says. "They trained together. It was all work for them—very little play. … They were football gods. Hall of Fame is the highest pinnacle we can reach. But they were
football gods."
Patrick Smith/Getty Images
