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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, November 9th, 2017

HIGHLIGHTS FROM FOOTBALL NIGHT IN ARIZONA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nov. 9, 2017

Following are highlights from Football Night in Arizona, which aired on NBC prior to tonight’s Thursday Night Football matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals.

ON ADRIAN PETERSON

Rodney Harrison: “When I was 25, I was sore. And I’ll tell you this, it took me until Wednesday, it took me three full days (to recover), and I was the guy doing the hitting. I wasn’t getting hit. So I think he is going to struggle tonight. I just don’t know if his body can fully recover because I am concerned about him. Not in the first and second quarter, but in the third and the fourth quarter when your legs start to get heavy.”

ON LARRY FITZGERALD

Tony Dungy: “I met Larry Fitzgerald when he was just a kid. I was coaching the Minnesota Vikings, he is from there. Not just a great player and a hard worker, but a fantastic person. My son in ninth grade wanted to be a receiver. He wanted to be Larry Fitzgerald. I asked him to say something to him. He took the time to write a personal handwritten note. ‘Hey, Eric, you want to be a great a great receiver? You have to work hard, you have to catch the ball, but more than that, if you want to be complete, you have to be a good student. Your books have to be as good as your play.’ Eric kept that letter on his wall his whole career.”

Harrison: “I just remember playing against him as a rookie. He came in as this high draft choice, and we said amongst the defensive backs, ‘We’re going to try to intimidate him.’ Every time he caught the ball, I tried to hit him, gave him some extra cheap shots, I pushed him, was talking trash to him, and he never said anything to me. He just continued to block me. He was humble, and that’s the thing that made him great. But he did chase me around. He is very prevalent in the run game.”

Football Night in Arizona also aired a feature on Fitzgerald that was hosted by NFL Insider Peter King. Click here for the video and a transcript.

ON RUSSELL WILSON

Liam McHugh: “For the Seahawks to win tonight and for them to be true title contenders, finish this off, Russell Wilson must …”

Dungy: “Be the MVP of the league. I’m telling you, he is playing great football, but he has to play great football because this team is different now. It’s not a dominating defensive team. It’s not a dominating run team. Without that, he has to do so much. And in the fourth quarter, big-play situations, improvising, he just has to make it happen. And he’s done it time and time again for this team.”

Harrison: “I don’t like the way they are playing him because — I know it is exciting, I know it is fun to watch — but he takes entirely too many hits. The one thing that we have seen over the course of the past two or three years, these quarterbacks are getting hurt when they scramble. Cam Newton, Marcus Mariota, all of these guys that are scrambling quarterbacks, I believe that [their team has] to run the football. Even if they do not have success tonight, run the football; try to keep the defense honest. So when you go to Philly in maybe January, you cannot drop back and pass the ball 40 times.”

Dungy: “You’re saying it is fun to watch, it is exciting, but it is also necessary. They aren’t able to do anything else. That is why he is scrambling around so much.”

Harrison: “They are trying to run the ball.”

HARRISON ON BRONCOS DEFENSE

Harrison: “They have to get back to playing disciplined defense. I know that they are very frustrated because the offense has been struggling and guys are getting out of position trying to make plays. Aqib Talib did it last week. He came off a coverage, got beat for a touchdown. You do that against Tom Brady, Tom Brady will light you up for 50 more points.”