NBC’s Football Night in America Previews Week 12’s Interviews

With NBC stuck on Pittsburgh-Kansas City tonight, the network does its best to hype the game. Bob Costas interviewed Chiefs coach Todd Haley and Pittsburgh wide receivers Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown.

To the quotes from the interviews.

“FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA” PREVIEW – WEEK 12

BOB COSTAS INTERVIEWS TODD HALEY, AND MIKE WALLACE & ANTONIO BROWN
“‘I’m not here for you to like me or for us to be best friends.” – Todd Haley to Bob Costas on what he tells his players
“It’s like having an extra coach on the sideline.” – Mike Wallace to Bob Costas on Hines Ward

NEW YORK – November 27, 2011 – Bob Costas interviewed Kansas City Chiefs head coach Todd Haley, and Steelers wide receivers Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown for tonight’s Week 12 edition of Football Night in America, which will also include highlights, analysis and reaction to earlier Week 12 games.

Football Night airs each Sunday at 7 p.m. ET with Costas hosting the program live from inside the stadium. In addition to his interviews, Costas is joined on site by Sunday Night Football commentators Al Michaels (play-by-play) and Cris Collinsworth (analyst) for reaction to the afternoon games.

Dan Patrick co-hosts Football Night from Studio 8G at NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza studios and is joined by Super Bowl-winning head coach Tony Dungy, two-time Super Bowl winner Rodney Harrison, Peter King of Sports Illustrated and Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk on NBCSports.com. Alex Flanagan will report from Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on the Patriots-Eagles game.

INTERVIEWS: Below are excerpts from Costas’ interviews with Haley, and Wallace and Brown.

TODD HALEY WITH BOB COSTAS

COSTAS on Haley growing up as the son of Steelers personnel executive Dick Haley: You’ve got a history with the Pittsburgh Steelers that goes back almost to your very first memories as a child, right?
HALEY: Absolutely…I truly bled black and gold in my daily life for many, many years all the way through college. How I felt that week depended upon the Steelers and how they played.

COSTAS: Being around that as a kid would have been great had it been any one of the 32 teams. But this was one of the greatest teams of all time.
HALEY: To be there at the start of what is still going to this day — how they built, how they are going to do things – (it) is still intact almost exactly the same way today, and obviously it works. But to be there as a young kid, I didn’t look any different at Jack Lambert and Terry Bradshaw than I did anybody else. I said that I wish now I had collected a few autographs.

HALEY: My father has always said this to me, which I do kind of tend to believe, ‘By growing up and being able to be around the teams you were able to be around and the players, you know what great is.’ And knowing what great is as a characteristic, or the ability to know what great is, is important to have. A lot of guys haven’t been around great to know what it is.

COSTAS on Haley as offensive coordinator for the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII: Do you have any flashbacks?
HALEY: I have many flashbacks to that Super Bowl. I’m very close with Kurt (Warner) and Larry (Fitzgerald) and there’s not many weeks that go by that that doesn’t come up in some way. We were leading in the Super Bowl with just a few minutes left. So I have a lot of flashbacks, especially when we play the Steelers.

HALEY on not being afraid to get in the face of his players: I’m pretty passionate about what I do. I can’t worry about what people think, and I don’t. I always tell the players at the start of any situation that I’ve been in, ‘I’m not here for you to like me or for us to be best friends. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to get you to play the best you can possibly play whether that’s to be the greatest ever or be great or good or a role player. I’m going to push you in any way that I can, and in the end I hope you respect that.’ I’m in it only to try to get players to be their best, and now, as a head coach, just try to get our team to be the best that it possibly can by any means necessary.

MIKE WALLACE & ANTONIO BROWN WITH BOB COSTAS

COSTAS on Hines Ward: What has it been like to, in a sense, supplant a guy you grew up watching?
WALLACE: (It’s) different not having him out there, but it’s for the better of the team. I think he knows that. He accepts it. It’s like having an extra coach on the sideline. He’s always telling us where to go. He’s like our big brother. I think he’s happy for us. I think he just wants to win.

COSTAS on Wallace’s speed: Have you ever come up against anybody who can run with you step for step?
WALLACE: No. Not even close.

COSTAS to Brown: You’re the son of Eddie Brown. Astute football fans might say, ‘You mean Eddie Brown, who played for the Cincinnati Bengals?’ No, I mean Eddie Brown, who played in the Arena League for the Albany and Indiana Firebirds.
BROWN: Yes, sir. I’m the proud son of my dad, who really set his standards high as far as what he did in his football career.

COSTAS: Did you follow him?
BROWN: Definitely. He put up some amazing records — nine touchdowns in a game. He did some great things in the Arena League.

COSTAS: He had a nine-touchdown game? That’s like playing in someone’s backyard.
BROWN: He was killing it.