After the game, we were there doing so many interviews I walked out and the buses were leaving. I saw the back of the red lights on the bus take off. I looked around. There was just my wife, Nikki, who was 7½ months pregnant, and my marketing guy Brian Lammi. We said, "What are we going to do?" So we just hitchhiked a ride back to the hotel. On the way, we stopped at a convenience store, had a few drinks in the backseat of the car then kept going back to the hotel. It was crazy. They [the driver] were happy to do it. We headed to the 7-Eleven and were good to go. There's one other thing. I kind of amuse myself sometimes. I wore three jerseys for every game. I had a warm-up jersey, a halftime jersey and a second-half jersey. I always changed because I sweat a lot. I changed shoulder pads, cleats, socks, everything. I did that every game. After the game, I gave one jersey to [coach Jon] Gruden and I kept two jerseys for me. That night after we had the team party, I slept in my jersey, the first-half jersey. I did. I wanted to wake up smelling like a champion. Oh boy. That's sick. So that's the jersey I ended up wearing to Disney. I left the grass stains in it and everything. I still have them, never washed them, nothing. Just let them be authentic. Got one in a frame, got one kind of hidden away. I don't tell too many people that. But it's been 10 years, so I guess I can tell it.
-- As told to Ashley Fox of ESPN.com

Our hotel was 60 miles from the Metrodome, out in the middle of nowhere. I can't remember where it was. The night before the game, I couldn't sleep. All I was thinking was, "This is the biggest game of my life." I set my alarm. What if it doesn't go off? What if there's a power outage? What if they play without me? Crazy thoughts. Every hour from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., I thought, "What the hell? I should get up and wander around." There was a brunch for players and their family that started at 6 a.m. Around 5 a.m., I figured I'd go down, grab a coffee. So I wander down, and what do I see? About seven or eight players, plus some coaches, all having the same experience. So we huddled up, laughed about it, talked about the game a bit, had some coffee. Hey, this is the big game! I stayed awake all morning. Hours later, a few of us that were restless -- I specifically remember Eric Williams and Chip Lohmiller -- decided to take a cab to the stadium instead of taking the bus. We got to the Metrodome seven hours before kickoff, and I lay down in the training room, and I took a three-hour power nap. I got the best sleep. I was relaxed. I knew I wasn't going to miss the game now.
-- As told to Seth Wickersham of ESPN The Magazine

People forget that the week of the game, we had a huge ice storm in Atlanta. Airports were shut down. Streets were closed. Most players' families didn't get into town when they were supposed to. I told everybody to arrive early and we could hang out, but that later in the week, I would need to do my own thing and go win a Super Bowl. So the storm was disruptive. But I never would have expected that one of my own teammates would be more disruptive. My backup, Paul Justin, was also my roommate that week. The night the storm hit, he said he was going out to spend a little time with his girlfriend and would be back late. But he never came back. Two nights before the Super Bowl, and my roommate -- and backup -- misses curfew. I freaked out. I kept calling him, calling my coaches, calling my teammates, even calling the team offices in St. Louis. I was up all night, like a worried father, thinking, "He hasn't called. No one's heard from him. What's going on?" The next morning, it's early, and I've barely slept before the biggest game of my life. I go down to breakfast and Paul comes strolling in, ready for breakfast. He had a big smile on his face and he said he hung out with his girlfriend. "I didn't think it was a big deal," he said. I exploded. "Really? You couldn't even call?" I told him he had to make curfew the rest of the time, and I was adamant about it. "From now on, you just stay here. Don't mess with me anymore." We watched every single movie on the hotel system, and he just stayed at my side. The hidden benefit to the whole incident was that I slept great the night before the game and felt so rested on Super Bowl Sunday. So maybe I should thank Paul for that.
-- As told to Morty Ain of ESPN The Magazine

Freddy Biletnikoff was one of those guys everybody loved to death. He played with such heart and toughness, but on the field, he never said a word. In the 10 years I played with him, I think I heard him say three words. In this game, I remember one series, we had the ball down in the red zone and Freddy sticks his head in the huddle, looks at me and says, "I can get a post." Now, Freddy hadn't said a word in the huddle all year, and if he says he can get a post, then he can get a post. We had a great belief in each other. So I picked out the formation I wanted to use -- the 99 post -- put him on the strong side, and bang. Freddy beats the cornerback, I throw the ball and he catches it down inside the 5, to the 1. On the next play, Pete Banaszak scores. Freddy never asked for anything, so when he did, I knew to give him what he wanted. After the game, in the locker room, one image that stuck with me for a long time was of Freddy. He was the MVP of that game, and when I walked in, I looked over at his locker and Freddy was sitting there with his son, Freddy Jr., sitting between his legs. To see Freddy holding his son, with big crocodile tears coming down both of their faces, I realized how much that win meant to the families and fans, the coaches and ownership. That was the first one for the Raiders and we were expected to win. The Steel Curtain had won four at our expense, so when you finally win one and see how much it means, that scene will always stick with me.
-- As told to Alyssa Roenigk of ESPN The Magazine

I always paid attention to what I ate before games. Your stomach has to be not empty but not full. I'd have a little piece of steak before games, maybe some coffee, a Snickers bar at halftime, then I'd have one of the guys on the team put a cheeseburger in my locker for after the game. Against Cincinnati, I got to the stadium so early that I was hungry, so I ate my Snickers bar before the game started. And in the fourth quarter, on the drive to beat them late in the game, I almost passed out. You couldn't even talk in the huddle. It was so loud. I was hyperventilating, yelling at the top of my lungs, and I was running out of juice. Halfway through the drive, I thought I was going to black out. I was seeing black and white fuzziness. I put my hands under center, and it felt like I was there for seconds. But I wasn't. Jerry [Rice] was running to a corner to the left, and I threw the ball 10 yards out of bounds because I thought I was going to pass out. I was using every bit of oxygen I had. Then, by the next play, it went away. I didn't say anything. I didn't even think about it again. And it came down to a touchdown pass to win the game. I did that 1,000 times in the backyard, throwing to my friends. To have that come into play and be a reality, that dream come true, that drive, I was extremely excited. There's nothing like that feeling, coming from behind, to throw a touchdown pass and have it be in the Super Bowl. And when I got back to the locker room, a cheeseburger was in my locker. Usually I have to fight some of the linemen for it, but this time I didn't.
-- As told to Seth Wickersham of ESPN The Magazine

I'm going back to Tampa to play in the Super Bowl, a year after they ran me out of town. There's obviously the potential for a lot of distractions. I knew my body was broken down. I knew we hadn't played that well offensively the last few weeks of the regular season and the playoffs. But I knew if my mind was right, and made good decisions, played situational football, then that defense -- might be the greatest defense that ever played football -- would bring it home. So what I did during the week was I unplugged the TV, I never read a newspaper. I just kind of created this isolation mentality where I was going to do a lot of visualization. I went over the plays, situations, hundreds and hundreds of times knowing that the best thing I could do for the Baltimore Ravens was play an A-plus game from the neck up. I was so conscious of controlling my emotions, being in an environment that was potentially overwhelming, that I didn't have enough emotion going into the game. The first couple series, I wasn't my normal self, I was too melancholy. And I remember we're coming out of a TV timeout and it's the third series of the game and I'm kind of stepping away from the huddle, and here comes Sam Gash. Great fullback, great player, great teammate, and he's got this look in his eyes like he's angry at me. And Sam and I are really close, one of my closest friends on the team. And he lifts me up under my shoulder pads and starts shaking me and says, "We need your juice. We need your energy. Come on, what's going on?" And it was at that moment I realized that I had been so conscious of controlling my emotions that I wasn't allowing my emotions to help me or my team. And thank God for Sam, that he got me out of it. And that's actually the drive that I was lucky enough to hit [Brandon] Stokley on the touchdown. And, really, with that defense, that was all we needed. I probably had the saddest post-Super Bowl experience of any quarterback in this group. I missed out on the celebration with my teammates. We spent so much time on the podium and then our PR guy grabbed me and started doing the rounds with me and I thought that was the appropriate way of doing it, I was just following directions, and little did I know my entire team had gone into the locker room to celebrate, the ultimate celebration. Any kid out there, dreaming of the greatest postgame celebration -- it's got to be after the Super Bowl when you're in the locker room with your teammates, your brothers, and I missed the whole thing. When I get back to the locker room, they're already sweeping the locker room floor. Every locker is empty and it's just my locker with all my junk in it. And I just sat there and it was one of the loneliest moments of my life.
-- As told to Greg Garber of ESPN.com

One thing that I haven't really talked about is how, a few nights before the game, I went out to dinner with a few Colts players who were old friends. They were so confident -- they really thought they were going to win. At dinner, Lou Michaels flat out told me that they were going to kick our asses, and specifically kick my ass. I felt a little mischievous, so I said, "Come on, Lou, what you know? You're just a damn kicker." Boy, did that infuriate him. He was an All-American defensive lineman at Kentucky, and he played a lot in the Colts' regular defensive package. But he also was their kicker. I knew calling him that would piss him off, and it did. Dinner went well and we all went home friendly and in good spirits. But man, it started off shaky.
-- As told to Morty Ain of ESPN The Magazine

The first one I knew I was going to start we were still the team that could not win the big game and I was nervous in a healthy way. But Coach Landry, he just wanted to make sure, so he hid me in his room every night down there in New Orleans. Coach Landry's wife, Alicia, one night just said, "Let the poor guy alone," so he did let me go. I went out one night on my own and saw "Dirty Harry" with Joe Williams, which was a Clint Eastwood movie. I was probably not as nervous as Coach Landry was. I could see that great intensity he had for this game. I think our whole team felt it and we played almost error-free football on game day. I thought I was nervous and I started worrying because he was so nervous and had me in the room every night going over the same things. I'm like, "Coach, I graduated from college. I got this thing figured out. I know what you're saying." But his intensity was greater than I ever saw it in my career before that first Super Bowl game. When we went back to the Super Bowls after that, we didn't have the same meetings at night, but we always had that extra week and giving him a little more time. Sometimes our players would say, "You give Tom a little more time and there's too many changes." But we were always prepared.
-- As told to Todd Archer of ESPN Dallas

One of our favorite teammates was a fella named Max McGee, a wide receiver. Max was what you would call a character. All of us loved him because of that. He was unbelievable, his lifestyle and what he did, you know, so on and so forth. When Coach Lombardi came to Green Bay, Max was just one of those guys who didn't like curfews. And he had several violations of it, in which he was fined severely. We used fines to pay for the team party at the end of the year. In training camp in Lombardi's first season in Green Bay, Coach put up on the board the level for the fines he was going to give out and the comments among the teammates were all directed at Max. They said, "Well it's easy to see who was going to pay for the team party this year." I love that story. Typical of Max, on the morning of the Super Bowl, I'm heading down to the lobby of the hotel for breakfast and to grab my morning newspaper and I just happened to glance to my left to the front door and it's 7 a.m. and Max McGee is walking in through the door, coming into the hotel after being out all night. I first thought, "Oh my God, here we are in the biggest, greatest game of our lives and this guy had been out all night." But typical of him, when our starting receiver Boyd Dowler went down with an injury, Max came in and played like gangbusters [seven catches for 138 yards and two TDs]. He probably played as well in that game as he had ever played in his entire life, but that was Max, he was incredible. A few weeks later, Max and I appeared at a father-son breakfast in Green Bay and the whole place just broke up when I told them what had happened that morning. We all loved Max because he was a character but a team player. And in a clutch situation, like that first Super Bowl, he was as strong as anyone on our team.
-- As told to David Fleming of ESPN The Magazine

My favorite memory from the Super Bowl as far as before or after the game came directly afterwards. We were up on stage -- myself, Mike [McCarthy], Ted [Thompson], Mark Murphy -- and after that we all went in different directions and scattered. There was a point -- after ESPN and NFL Network, my postgame press conference, and being in the locker room with the guys for a couple minutes -- that I came back on the field, and I saw my family, who had all gotten down onto the field at that point. It was my mom, my dad, my two brothers and my grandparents, and they'd all gotten down onto the field. That was a really special moment, because my grandparents, who are both late 70s, early 80s, had driven all the way from California in the rough weather and had made it out there. Grandma and Grandpa don't fly, but they'd made it all the way out there and they had been a big part of my life since I was a young person. To have them on the field, and my two brothers and my parents, and to take some really special photos there, it was a great memory because it was such a whirlwind in those first 45 minutes after the Super Bowl. To have that moment and to be able to enjoy it with my family and my grandparents, the most important people in my life, that was a special moment for me. We only got two on-field passes for postgame, and I wondered about who was going to come down. The plan was for my two brothers to come down, because my parents were just going to stay with my grandparents. So I was looking for them during my time running around the field initially, but thankfully I was able to run right into them about 45 minutes after the game and all six of them were on the field, so that was a special, unexpected moment for us.
-- As told to Greg Garber of ESPN.com

My mom was blind, and my father had already passed away. My mom was at home, and I'd call her each evening from New Orleans. She had never seen a football game, but she'd listened to many of them over the radio and TV over the years following my career in college and in the NFL. So I called her up every evening, and all those things she'd heard of the game and what I'd explained to her, you'd think she'd a have little quote-unquote piece of advice, or whatever you want to call it. She said, "Make sure they block for you." And then next night we'd be talking again, and she would say, "Don't let them sack you." … The last one, she said, "Tell those receivers to catch the ball for you."
-- As told to Elizabeth Merrill of ESPN.com

I remember the whole playoff run in 2005 where I promised I'd get Jerome Bettis a game ball every time, and we did. After the first Super Bowl in Detroit I remember taking a knee and having that ball and turning around and giving it to Jerome. Like, "Here's the last ball I promised you." You're all right there, with the linemen, and you're all hugging. You don't know what to do. Not too long after that, someone tapped me on the shoulder, just, like, a teammate -- I thought it was a teammate. I turned around and it was my parents. I was, like, "How the heck did you guys get down here?" Later, I found out someone had grabbed them and said, "Hey, these are Ben's parents," and they came down on the field. It was bizarre to hug a teammate -- all I'm seeing is teammates -- and all a sudden, it was my parents. It was really neat to see my mom and dad right away.
-- As told to Merril Hoge of ESPN

After all the good things that happened to us in Arizona, the thing I think back on that I got to share with my teammates was the parade they had for us in New York. I had heard of the Canyon of Heroes but I didn't know much about it. We were all gathering at the team facility in New Jersey and Coach Coughlin told us about it. He named all the famous people that they had ticker tape parades for, the war heroes, the presidents, the great athletes that had been down that path. But I truly didn't understand the magnitude of it, and how many people were going to be there. I figured, "Hey, we've got a little parade to do, maybe it will be fun." We took buses into lower Manhattan and they put us on different floats. I was on the first one with Coach Coughlin, Michael Strahan and Mayor Bloomberg. We had the Lombardi trophy and the NFC Championship trophy, too, which we kind of rotated around. Trust me, you didn't want to be the guy holding up that NFC trophy. You start in the financial district, go up Broadway and end up at City Hall and nothing can prepare you for what it's like. There were several million people, some of them hanging off buildings 40 stories high. People -- Giants fans wearing blue, city people all dressed up -- are wall to wall, as far as you can see. The paper's coming down and it was a rush. Just the sheer excitement was something I've never experienced. It was chaos, and it was unexpected how moving it was. I called Peyton afterward and said, "When you won, I know y'all had a parade. Well, we had a real parade."
-- As told to Greg Garber of ESPN.com

The night before the game I'm sitting there watching a movie. I don't remember what movie it was. It was some old Western and I'm with [Dale] Hellestrae, [John] Gesek and [Jay] Novacek, and as we're watching this movie, I heard this noise outside the window and I didn't know what it was. I open up the shade and it's just pouring down rain. It's thundering out. Just pouring out rain. I don't know if you remember this, but I couldn't throw a wet football at all. It was so bad to the point where I'd make the centers change pants at halftime because it would get wet from the sweat so as the ball would come up it'd get on my hands and I'd have a hard time gripping the football. I'd make them change pants at halftime. So now it's pouring rain and I'm thinking, "You've got to be kidding me." The biggest game of my life and it's raining. I mean, you could've put Nate Newton at quarterback and had a better chance of winning with him than me. I'm not kidding you. Coaches were always fearful of that going in, that it might rain on game day. I'm like, "Oh my God," and these guys think it's the funniest thing ever. They're just laughing at me. But I slept great and probably had the best night of sleep I'd ever had before a game. And when I woke up the next morning, the first thing I did was run over and open the shades and it was a beautiful Southern California day. It was just fabulous, not a cloud in the sky. That certainly helped as I went to the stadium that day.
-- As told to Todd Archer of ESPN Dallas