'You play to win the game': An oral history of a memorable moment

Regardless of all the interceptions, he plucked out of the air, the victories he’s racked up as a head coach, and the stacks of witty lines he gave viewers as an ESPN talking head, Herm Edwards is still known for a half dozen words he said almost two decades ago.

You know which ones.

For better or worse, “You play to win the game” has come to define the 66-year old Arizona State’s football head coach. It started as a weekly press conference on October 30, 2002, addressing an abysmal Jets squad. It veered from a typical conversation to an all-out rant and eventually became a staple in sports vernacular.

“This is what’s great about sports -- you play to win the game. Hello? You play to win the game. You don’t play to just play it,” Edwards muttered that day. “That’s the great thing about sports. You play to win. ‘You play to win the game.’”

Throughout the years and as Edwards stayed in the spotlight, the soundbite somehow weaved its way into the public consciousness. When it comes to the New York Jets, people know that Joe Namath made a guarantee, and Herm Edwards, who coached the Jets from 2001-2005, told everyone why you play the game.

“There is no situation so dire it would make Jets coach Herman Edwards curse,” former New York Times Jets’ reporter Judy Battista wrote after the presser. “But to Edwards, ‘quit’ is a four-letter word, and when he was asked today if there were any risk of the Jets giving up as the season spirals toward disaster, he reacted with more anger than he had previously displayed publicly in his season and a half as head coach.”

If you’ve ever seen the video clip -- and it would be truly impressive if you haven’t -- you read the words of the quote as Edwards’ passionately articulated it that day. Your voice rises an octave as you yell out, “Hello,” like it’s a question. You voice it as Edwards did as if there’s a period between every other word and your arms bobbing up as you say: “You play. To win. The game.”

And since that day, any image of Edwards, even now as the Arizona State head coach, even though he refuses to utter the quote again, that rant is the first thing that comes to mind. Here’s how it all went down and the legacy it has taken:

NOTE: Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity

THE BACKGROUND

Ray Mickens (Jets’ DB, 1996-2003): That was Herm’s second year. We were trying to get that identity.

Rich Cimini (Former New York Daily News Jets’ beat reporter): The team was just unraveling. They just blew like a 23-3 lead against Cleveland at home (the Sunday before the presser).

Barry Wilner (New York Associated Press’ reporter): That was a talented team, and they should not have been 2-5.

Cimini: They were a team coming apart at the seams.

Randy Lange (Former Jets’ reporter for The Bergen Record): Part of it may have been that Herm was going through a quarterback change at that time. (Chad) Pennington was drafted in 2000 but didn’t start until 2002, that year. And he didn’t start off the season. It was Vinny Testaverde’s ball for about four games and, early in the fourth game at Jacksonville, Vinny struggled -- I think he may have gotten hurt -- and Pennington came in, and it was Pennington’s (job).

Chad Pennington (Jets’ quarterback, 2000-2007): Herm brought me into the training room and said, “Hey, the ball is in your hands. Don’t look back.” From then on, I had confidence in myself, and I knew he had confidence in me to take this thing where it needed to go.

Battista: The season appeared to be in a tailspin.

THE PRESS CONFERENCE

Lange: It was a Wednesday, and Wednesdays in the NFL are generally your big media days.

Mark Cannizzaro (Covers the Jets’ for New York Post): The Jets press room was this small room; it was like a small classroom at Hofstra University. It was a facility on the Hofstra campus. But our press room was not a very large room.

Battista: I just remember we were all jammed into the press area. It was really small, and it was a packed house. And it took off -- that’s for sure.

Lange: The press conference was at 11 o’clock-ish, 11:30 it was done. Then we’d go to the locker room. Then we’d get lunch. Then we’d watch a little bit of practice.

Cimini: I was sitting to his left. I believe Judy was to his right. Judy used to sit in the same seat, in the front row, but to Herm’s right.

Cannizzaro: I don’t know why, but I remember that day -- The-you-play-to-win-the-game day -- I was actually sitting in a chair to Herm’s right.

Cimini: It was Judy Battista’s question that spurred his rant.

Battista: I just asked the question. I wasn’t implying that the team was quitting, I was just sort of asking, “Do you need to guard them against thinking that the season is over?” And Herm just kind of took it from there.

Wilner: He was ready for such a question. I think he probably expected it.

Lange: He did bring up the volume to 11, as they say. He had that whole theatrical thing down.

Cimini: It just became epic.

Edwards: You only have one shot. Words are powerful. You have to make sure you get it right because you don’t get it back … I said what I said. That was the first time I’ve said it, and I’ve never said it since.

“You play to win the game” was just a small part of a much larger Edwards’ tirade. It began with Battista’s question, and there were follow-ups by Battista, Cannizzaro, and others. With each question, Edwards’ animosity seemed to build.

In the question that preceded “You play to win the game,” someone asked Edwards if he had relayed his thoughts on quitting to his players. “I don’t need to relay ’em. You can relay ’em today. They know who their coach is, they know they ain’t got no choice,” he answered.

The entire press conference lasted nearly a half-hour and consisted of more than 30 questions. Yet, it was the final seven that revolved around quitting and Edwards’ penultimate answer that provided one of the most memorable soundbites in NFL history.

Edwards: The intentions were to never come up with what I said. I didn’t plan it. It was my imagination. I don’t plan things; I just don’t. I just think it’s more of me just understanding the situation, and the question was posed, it got to the point where it was like, “If you quit ...” and that’s just not an option in anything you do in life. You can’t quit. You don’t sign on in life to quit.

Cannizzaro: This was probably his most demonstrative (personality) because you could really almost put a period between all the words. You. Play. To. Win. The. Game. That was how Herm enunciated it.

Edwards: I wanted to make sure that my voice was going to be louder than anybody else’s… You have to set the tone for the next week, whether you win or lose. It’s important that you frame, “This is the mindset of the coach,” because the players listen to this stuff.

Wilner: I don’t even know if I’d call it a trade. He wasn’t berating anybody, and he wasn’t saying it in an angry manner, but he clearly was getting across a really important message to his team.

Cimini: He was just waiting for the opportunity. I think he went into the press conference just thinking to himself, “I’m going to stir it up here a little bit because this team needs a kick in the butt.”

Edwards: I think the press is a great vehicle for you as a coach if you understand it. It can be a voice for you, but you have to make sure you send a message. It’s your message because you don’t want the message of other people all the sudden coming in your building.

Cimini: Herm was very calculated. He may not appear that way when he’s behind his podium and on his soapbox preaching, but a lot of what he did was calculated. I’m sure there was a method behind his madness there, and he was trying to use the media to convey his message.

Edwards: When you sit in a leadership position, you have to make sure the people in the building understand the message going forward, what we’re about to do. That was kind of the mindset going into that press conference.

Mickens: I remember watching it after the fact and looking back at it, it’s funny. But at the time, it wasn’t funny for us. We knew he was frustrated; he was mad, and he was kind of upset. Not just at the team but at the media.

Kevin Mawae (NFL Hall of Famer, Jets’ center, 1998-2005): It came out that night on the news, and I was like, “That was one of the dumbest questions a reporter could have ever asked.”

Pennington: He felt like the question was just so ludicrous … To coach Edwards, it was really simple, and I think that’s why you got such a reaction from him based on the question.

Edwards: When you sit in a leadership position, you have to make sure the people in the building understand the message going forward, what we’re about to do. That was the mindset going into that press conference.

Mickens: You see your coach up there fighting for you. We kind of took that battle cry.

Battista: One thing he told me later was that he went home that night, and his wife, Lia, said to him like, “Were you yelling at Judy?” I did not think he was angry at me. I knew he was delivering a message.

Edwards: It was a message sent to the team. It was a message to the team sent through the reporters. Obviously, the players on Wednesday, they heard what I said. I think the great part of it was, for me, is when we came back Thursday, in the team meeting, I didn’t need to say anything. They all understood it.

JETS TURN SEASON AROUND, RALLY TO MAKE PLAYOFFS

Mawae: Herm came into the team meeting room the next morning and was like, “These guys have already written you off. These beat writers have already written you off. Now it’s up to you to respond, and how are you going to do it?” And that’s kind of how we approached it.

Wilner: The team clearly responded to that. The next practice was really crisp -- Herm let us watch a lot of practice. You could tell the players were energized a little by it.

Mickens: That press conference resonated with a lot of people. We were all feeling the same way, but the fact he went off on the media like that, that gave us a little extra kick.

Pennington: It didn’t wake us up as a team. Waking us up as a team was the (quarterback) decision two weeks before, “You play to win the game.” But it solidified the wake-up call. It was proof that the decision he made (to change quarterbacks), that he believed in it, and he believed in it very passionately.

Cannizzaro: There was an assumption on everybody’s part that the Jets were going to be 2-6 because the Chargers were going to win in San Diego.

Edwards: You have to create hope, and then you have to give them some direction on how to do it. Then they all bought in. We went to San Diego and when we got out on that field, I was like, “We’re focused now.”

Cannizzaro: They went to San Diego, and they kicked the crap out of the Chargers … They won 44-13 that day in San Diego and, obviously, went 7-2 the rest of the way and got to the AFC Divisional Round of the playoffs.

Lange: I remember thinking in San Diego like, “Where did this come from?” These guys were like on fire against a 6-1 team at home … All of a sudden, here come the Jets.

Mawae: We knew we weren’t bad, but some breaks here and there just weren’t playing out for us.

Battista: They made the playoffs. They totally turned it around, which is why I would joke with Herm like, “What!? So, I played a pivotal role in the season by asking that question? Like really?” There’s no question the team turned it around.

Cannizzaro: Can we attribute that to Herm’s rant? It’s impossible to know. But at the very least, that passion and that rant had to have some percentage to do with the way that locker room responded.

Pennington: (The Charger game) was a turning point, no doubt about it. And that press conference set the tone for that week and then that week set the tone for the rest of the season.

Mickens: At the time, it was a spark plug for us. It gave us players confidence and confidence in what we could do. It reaffirmed our support for our head coach, our leader. And we just went from there.

Mawae: When your head coach has that mentality that he’s not worried about where we’re at right now, that we’ve just got to fix some things, it carries over to the rest of the team.

Mickens: Well, in that situation, we had a bad start to the season. And instead of him piling on us, he defended us in a way. Like, “We’re playing to win. We’re not playing just to play.” Basically, it gave us confidence.

MEMORIES OF HERM EDWARDS, MASTER MOTIVATOR

Cimini: I’ve covered the Jets for a long time. I’ve heard many of those, “We’re not dead yet” speeches. And 95 percent of the time they are dead. That was the rare exception that they actually weren’t.

Battista: That one is the one that has stuck around because of how amazing it was, but there were a lot of other press conferences that were equally funny and certainly informative.

Lange: We would joke around about (former Jets coach Bill) Parcells and say, “Gee, we could go out to Hudson Turnpike and sell tickets to this press conference. I mean, this guy is so freakin good.” And Herm was the same way. Even on a bad day he was good.

Wilner: He’s one of the great interviews. He’s almost like an evangelist.

Edwards: There’s a downside to it, too. When I went to work at ESPN, I told them, I said, “Look, I don’t want to be the television guy that every time I turn around, you guys want me to motivate people. I don’t want to be the rah-rah guy.” But people think like, “Oh, let’s have coach say something.” All the sudden you get put into this box like, “Oh, he’s the motivational guy.” No. They just think I just come up with this stuff. “How does he come up with this stuff?” It just comes out.

Cimini: I remember one day during training camp he just went on a tangent about how he got locked out of the facility and he had to scale a fence. Just out of the blue he just started talking about it for 10 minutes about how the security (wasn’t there to) let him in and, “Poor me, I’m just the head coach, I guess I don’t matter around here.”

Battista: He launches into this whole story about how he went to (his hometown of) Berkeley and he got his “Berkeley Backup” and how he was outraged so he parked far away and he hopped the fence. And we were like, “You hopped the fence?!” And so he took us outside and demonstrated how he hopped the fence and he jumped the fence in front of us.

Cannizzaro: I’ll never forget (he spoke to his players) about trusting the guy next to you, trusting your teammates. He went on this Herm rant and said, “You get on the airplane and you’re trusting the pilot, aren’t you? You have no choice but to trust the pilot” … Herm’s strength as a coach, to me, has always been his ability to motivate and bring perspective to players with some of his stories.

Mawae: He can say it and you can say it, it’s the same words, but Herm’s personality makes you buy into it and believe it. That’s the difference.

Lange: He had all of these stock phrases but the way he used them, you never got tired of hearing them. Some comedians or some politicians get out there and say the same things and you’re like, “I’ve heard that one before. I’m tired.” With Herm, it was like,” Oh, OK, let’s see what he has to say this time.”

Mawae: Herm-isms, they’re really just truths. If you really think about it, they’re common sense things. If you threw them all together and put them in a book and published it, the (title) would be like, “Simple truths to live your life by.”

Edwards: When you get on television, people just assume you have these speeches in your back pocket. That you just pull them out. It doesn't work that way. I don’t have this catalog like, “Oh, this is what’s going on, I’m going to say this.” Eventually, I piece my way through it and think, “How will this affect people when I say it?”

Mickens: There were a lot of moments when the camera wasn't rolling in the locker room and I was like, “This is made for TV” … Herm, his motivational speeches always hit home. They were always on point and they always had you ready to play.

Cannizzaro: Herm has a way of mixing whatever BS that he has to use with how genuine he truly is.

Mawae: A lot of people don’t know that Herm works out at like 4 o’clock in the morning. He’s in the building at like 3:30 or 4:00 o’clock, and he’s by himself. So, there’s a lot of time to think about your messaging to players for that day … I have to think when you’re in the weight room by yourself, and you have plenty of time to listen to your jazz and think about life, things come pretty naturally in like kind of way.

Edwards: There’s a reason I get up real early in the morning. That’s my time. I’m a thinker. I plan out what has to be done every day in my brain. And I go, “OK, who are the people I need to touch today or deal with today to create some anxiety?”

WHY HAS IT HAD SUCH A SHELF LIFE

Cimini: You would have never ever thought that something like that would last so long. I guess it was just the passion in which he said it and just the message it conveyed. And just the catchphrase, “You play to win the game.”

Lange: I guess I didn’t think at the time that it would be one of those quotes but, you know, if Jim Mora can say “Playoffs” and that lives on and “They are who we thought they were” from Dennis Green.

Mawae: The quotes are so simple, but it’s so true in every aspect. Like, the team is exactly who we thought they were. We did the homework; they did exactly what we thought they were going to do. They are who we thought they were. And playoffs? Why would you think we’re going to the playoffs? We suck right now.

Mickens: You get the Allen Iverson (quote) about practice. “You talkin ’bout practice?” It’s funny now, but, for him, he was pissed at the time.

Cimini: It’s like the “Butt Fumble.”

Cannizzaro: Mark Sanchez … This guy won four playoff games in his first two years as an NFL quarterback on a team that really wasn’t that good. That said, what does everyone remember him for? The “Butt Fumble.” And that just has stuck with him, in the same way, the “You play to win the game” thing has stuck with Herm, which is less damaging and way less embarrassing.

Edwards: It’s kind of funny. You’re in that league for 30 years as a coach and a player. The player part is always about the (Miracle at the Meadowlands) fumble. It’s not about the 38 interceptions. It’s the fumble -- and I get it. And being a coach, it’s that (quote).

Cannizzaro: The fact that he has been defined by that -- not defined by that but been associated most with that is amazing. It really is. And the interesting thing, too, is that it took place long before social media.

Cimini: This was the pre-Twitter age. If that had happened today, it would have gone viral within seconds … I’ve been covering the team for 31 years, and that’s really one of the more remarkable things that I’ve covered because of the delayed effect, because of its staying power.

Edwards: I think being on television gives it a little bit of a life.

Cannizzaro: ESPN is a big part of it. In the time he spent at ESPN, you know they rang that thing up a million times. I know there were plenty of times when I would watch Herm on ESPN and they would dial that thing up just to tweak him, just to have a little fun with him.

Wilner: It’s a great video clip and you can apply it to almost any situation in any sport, and that’s what they do.

Edwards: People can resonate with it because it’s simple. It’s what sports are all about. Competition is not very difficult. There’s an outcome, and you want to be on the good side of it.

Cimini: I guess it’s timeless because of the message it conveys. He got a beer commercial out of it. It was a Coors Light commercial. The ultimate irony there was that I don’t even think Herm drinks.

Battista: He and I have joked about it since then. Like, first of all, when it became a beer commercial, I’m like, “Am I getting any cut of this?”

Cannizzaro: As time has passed, it’s become more of kind of a folklore thing than it was in the immediate aftermath.

Cimini: It’s somewhat mythical but not totally because there is evidence it happened.

Battista: And the season did turn around. If the season had fallen flat, I’m not sure it would have resonated as much -- or it may have been mocked.

Cannizzaro: I don’t know if Herm is bothered by the fact that he’s associated with that so much or amused.

Edwards: I’m associated with that. I’m associated with the Miracle at the Meadowlands. I’m fortunate in my lifetime, and it’s never planned that I was involved in some things that don’t go away.

Join your fellow Sun Devil fans on our premium message board, the Devils’ Huddle, to discuss this article and other ASU football and recruiting topics. Not a member yet? Sign up today here and get all the latest Sun Devil news!