Troy Polamalu says every year of his NFL career he watched every snap from 5 different safeties and built both highlight and lowlight tapes on them because you're never going to be original in pursuit of greatness “Every year I watched five safeties.And I would literally watch every single one of their plays. I would make a highlight tape… And a lowlight tape of all of them.” “That’s what I did throughout my whole career. Ed was somebody I watched every single one of his plays. Obviously Ed is somebody who I admired. But there’s a bunch of guys. Donovin Darius. Bob Sanders.” “A lot of guys that don’t get a lot of credit that were Hall of Fame-caliber players. And to be very frank, I was in the most beautiful situation in Pittsburgh. I had a Hall of Fame defensive coordinator. Hall of Fame head coach.” “You could put any of these players in my position and they would have been just as successful as I am. I studied. I was obsessed with the game. I broke down safeties this way and even cornerbacks this way. I studied everything about them. I studied the greats.” “If anybody saw how much Ed Reed talked about how important film was and you didn’t listen to that… What are you doing? All of these things became habits for me. You hear what Tom Brady is doing… Health, wellness, longevity… You hear Gilbert Arenas talking about watching Kobe Bryant.” “Honestly… You’ve got to have a student mindset. You’re not going to be original in anything. There are a lot of great players that have done a lot of great things. It’s no secret. It’s sacrifice. It’s grit. It’s hard work. It’s no special talent that anybody else has.”