NBC’s Football Night in America Quotage for Week 5

Let’s do the quotage from tonight’s edition of Football Night in America that aired at 7 p.m. on Sunday. It included stuff on the Brett Favre/Jenn Sterger story and how Peter King sneered at Charley Casserly’s report on the Tom Brady/Randy Moss shouting match that may or may not have happened.

“FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA” NOTES & QUOTES; WEEK 5

“It isn’t automatically going to be a suspension.” – “Football Night’s” Peter King on Brett Favre situation

“I don’t think it happened.” – “Football Night’s” Rodney Harrison on reported Tom Brady-Randy Moss incident

Bob Costas interviews Mike Singletary & Kevin Kolb; Costas’ halftime essay addresses NFL parity

NEW YORK – October 10, 2010 – Following are highlights from NBC Sports’ “Football Night in America.” Bob Costas hosted the show live from Candlestick Park and was joined on site for commentary by Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. The last time Costas and Michaels were both in Candlestick together was for the World Series when the 1989 earthquake hit. Co-host Dan Patrick, analysts Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison, and reporter Peter King covered the news of the NFL’s fourth week live from NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza studios. Alex Flanagan reported from Dallas Cowboys Stadium on the Titans-Cowboys game.

ON BRETT FAVRE

Dungy on its affect tomorrow night: “I don’t think it will affect Favre and I definitely don’t think it will affect the rest of the Vikings.”

ON REPORTED BRADY-MOSS INCIDENT

Editor’s note, that video of Charley Casserley talking about that incident has been taken down from YouTube and thus no longer can be seen on Fang’s Bites.

ON SAINTS

Dungy: “You shouldn’t lose that game…You can’t turn the ball over which they did today. You can’t miss conversions. You can’t have no running game and expect to win games. I don’t care who you’re playing…I think they’ve lost their running game and I think that has really hurt them.”

Harrison: “And this is a team that seems like they’re playing with a burden right now. They’re trying to meet everyone’s expectations. They’re turning the ball over. They’re not playing loose. They’re not having fun.”

ON RAVENS

Dungy: “They look like the best team in the AFC today because they have that running game going.”

Harrison: “But it’s not about the offense. It’s about that defense…And it’s not about the front seven and Ray Lewis. It’s about that no name secondary. I can only imagine how good they’re going to be once Ed Reed gets back.”

ON COWBOYS

Patrick: “They’re enigmatic.”

Harrison: “Coming off a bye. Playing at home. Very disappointing.”

Dungy: “Part of being a leader at the quarterback position is protecting the football. You’ve got to do that to be a great quarterback.”

ON BEARS

Dan Patrick: “If I said, and you didn’t see the game, that the starting quarterback for the Bears would have six completions and throw four interceptions your reaction would be what?”

Dungy: “Did we lose by 30 or 40?”

ON CHARGERS

Dungy on Norv Turner: “His players had made a ton of mistakes on the road in big situations. (Antonio) Gates today, as great a player as he is, you’re in field goal range to kick the winning field goal. You cannot hold in that situation. You can’t get punts blocked. You can’t fumble the ball at the one yard line going in…San Diego is way too talented to have this happen.”

ON RAIDERS

Dungy: “My big winner is a team we haven’t called in a long time, the Oakland Raiders. They played hard, tough football. They played 60 minutes. They won and amazingly have put themselves back in the AFC West race.” 

ON REDSKINS

Michaels: “The Washington team is a very, very resilient team.”

ON GIANTS

Collinsworth: “We had a chance to see them and you could just see every single week now they’ve gotten better and better and better and against a good offense down in Houston. They looked great today.

Costas: “They have bounced back with a vengeance.”

Harrison on Tom Coughlin: “He has these guys playing focused, motivated football, and the most important thing: they’re playing discipline the last two weeks.”

ON CONTROVERSIAL CATCH IN BUCCANEERS-BENGALS GAME

Dungy: “I’m glad I’m not an official because I don’t know what a catch now is when you hit the ground. They said with Calvin Johnson’s ball that you have to catch it all the way. The ball can’t move. I don’t see how that can be a catch and Calvin’s isn’t…To me, they’re either both catches or they’re both incomplete passes.”

ON BENGALS

Harrison on Carson Palmer: “Each week, I’m sitting there watching tape on this guy and I’m trying to figure out when will this guy prove he’s an elite quarterback? And time and time again he’s making critical mistakes in critical parts of the game. The guy has seven turnovers the last three games. He’s an average quarterback right now.”

Dungy: “They’ve got a lot of big play receivers and they’re passing game is not connecting.”

ON PANTHERS & BILLS

Patrick: “How bad is Carolina?”

Harrison: “They’re the worst team in football. My question to you (Dungy), can they beat Buffalo?”

Dungy: “A 0-0 tie.”

ON 49ERS

Collinsworth: “That’s really what the conversation is always going to be about here in San Francisco…Joe Montana and Steve Young and even Jeff Garcia for a while there play. It just adds so much pressure to Alex Smith now. Here’s a poor kid having to follow all those legends. They’ve got the losing streak going. The lights are on pretty bright right now. Not only for Alex Smith but for Mike Singletary as well.”

Patrick: “Do you think they’re playing nervous?”

Harrison: “Wouldn’t you be nervous if you had Alex Smith playing for you?”

Following are highlights of Bob Costas’ interview with Mike Singletary:

On starting 0-4 and still with a chance to make the playoffs: “If I thought any differently then I shouldn’t be sitting in this seat. The thing that we are going to do is stop shooting ourselves in the foot. And once we stop shooting ourselves in the foot, we’re going to get where we need to go.”

On greatest strength: “My greatest strength as a head coach is the ability to surround myself with people smarter than me – that’s my greatest strength – and not having an ego about it.” 

On area of improvement: “Making sure that I don’t impose what I have done as a professional onto my players. The level of detail, the level of consistency that to me is something that from time to time I have to have a coach say, ‘Hey Mike, you know what, he’s not you now.’ Or ‘I’m not you.’ So as long as we can remember that, we’re good.”

On being known as such a physically intense player: “One of the things that I learned very early on from my mom growing up in the church she always said, ‘Wherever you are, make sure that you act accordingly.’ So as I was growing up, if I was on the football field, every bit of effort and fight and everything else that goes into being a football player, that’s what I’m going to do. If I’m at a business meeting, I’m going to handle myself accordingly. If I’m at home, I’m going to be dad. I think it’s just a matter of not allowing football to define me and by making sure that first and foremost – I represent my family.”

ON EAGLES

Collinsworth on if Kolb is team’s best QB: “I don’t think so. I think Mike Vick will be. He’s proven so far here that he has been not only the best quarterback on this team but maybe the best quarterback in the NFL to date when he’s been healthy.”

Following are highlights of Bob Costas’ interviews with Kevin Kolb:

On QB controversy: “I’m not trying to compare numbers. I’m not trying to compare starts. I’m just trying to go win the game and take care of it from a team standpoint. I think the rest of it will take care of itself.”

On concussion: “I’ve never had one before so I can’t really speak on it from experience. The side effects that went along with it are astonishing. For me, it was vision and processing things. If you were to tell me, “Hey, we’re going to sit down and have an interview.” It would take me a second to register what an interview was. Especially for a quarterback, when you have to digest things fast, you want to have control over everything and know every different intricacy of the offense, and you can’t process what nickel packaging means…That was a unique situation to go through.”

On scrutiny in Philadelphia: “One thing you realize is that, in this city, you have to find a way to block it all out. You have to build up walls for yourself. If you get into analyzing everything that everybody is saying and caring what everybody is saying, it’s just going to tear you down. Not only myself, but my family has done the same thing. I think Mike has done the same thing and that’s the only way you can go play your game. That’s what you have to do. When the whistles blow, you have to be able to forget it all and then go play.”

ON LAST TIME COSTAS & MICHAELS TOGETHER IN CANDLESTICK PARK

Costas: “1989. Earthquake. World Series…An incredible night and its human nature…especially when you’re in the ballpark, especially when it’s the World Series. You figure all the attention of the nation is focused on this one place. And when the ballpark shook but didn’t crumble, the immediate reaction is, we’ve dodged it. We’re ok. But then, minutes later, we learned about the Bay Bridge and you did such a wonderful job anchoring the coverage.”

Michaels: “But 20 minutes after the earthquake remember what the crowd is chanting, “Play Ball,” but then of course word came of what had actually taken place.”

Costas’ halftime essay addressed NFL parity:

Every year, it’s a familiar refrain: the NFL is a league of parity. More so, it seems, than other sports. In pro football, a team’s fortunes can shift drastically from year to year. After all, the difference between 10-6 and 6-10 might be a few plays. In baseball, the difference between 100 wins and 60 is something else again. Anyway, 2010 is shaping up as especially unpredictable.

Take the Super Bowl champion Saints, who are 3-2, but have appeared off their game, including a surprising loss today in Arizona. For their part, the Cardinals, still groping for answers without Kurt Warner, are nonetheless 3-2, good enough for first in the NFC West. In the AFC West, the Chiefs, of all teams, were the last undefeated squad to go down, taking their first loss today against the Colts. So after just five weeks, the ’72 Dolphins can pop the champagne. There will be no run at perfection this year.

There have been other surprises as well, but no bigger shocker than the Dallas Cowboys. Touted as Super Bowl contenders, they fell to 1-3 today with a loss against Tennessee, giving up a whopping 34 points. And at home, coming off a bye no less. Jerry Jones has been jonesing for a Super Bowl featuring his team in its own stupendous new house in Dallas this February. America’s team hosting America’s biggest game. There’s still plenty of time to make it happen. But not if the ‘boys, who were flagged for 12 penalties today, don’t sharpen up in a hurry. Otherwise, Jerry Jones will be a relatively disinterested spectator at his own Super Bowl party.

We’re done for now. We’ll have our final Mad Men sneak peek of the season around midnight.