Eric Mangini

To beat Tom Brady, you must have a completely different second-half game plan

The thing with Tom is if he knows what you're in, he's going to the right place. So without disguising coverages and giving him his own coverage, you've got no chance... in the second half, we had a totally different game plan. So you knew that they were going to go into the locker room, get it figured out. So you had to have a second pitch within the game plan.

Most of the young offensive coaches being hired in the current 'copycat' cycle will struggle

I imagine that this [hiring young offensive coaches] will be the same thing. Everybody's trying to copycat and catch on to this trend. But, look, being a head coach is hard... there's going to be a lot of guys who struggle.

The Saints have the strongest combination of defense and special teams remaining in the playoffs

I like their combination of defense and special teams... I would say New Orleans is probably [the strongest].

The Gatorade color for the Super Bowl winner will be lemon-lime

I think we were traditional on our sidelines. I would go lemon-lime.

Atlanta is the most interesting Wild Card team and can go the distance

The most interesting team to me right now is Atlanta... at that point, we had kind of figured it out. We'd gotten over all the post-Super Bowl stuff that goes with it and understood kind of what we had to do, but it was a little bit too late. I think if we had gotten into the playoffs at that point, we would have been a real problem for teams.

Success relaxes teams like a martini, leading to Super Bowl hangovers

Teddy Atlas always used to say success is like a martini. It relaxes you. And it's true. You think that you can go into the next season and be exactly the same as you were, and you're going to glide through those games, but everybody else has looked at you. Everybody else is playing their best against you.

The 2017 Saints are more dangerous because they finally have a legitimate running game

Now they've actually got a legitimate running game, and they've got backs that can hurt you... to me, that adds a dimension that they haven't had since the last time they went to the Super Bowl.

A smart linebacker is the defensive equivalent of a quarterback and more valuable than a safety

If you can get a linebacker, like a Ray Lewis type... that position is so key because they've got to communicate with the front and they've got to communicate with the secondary. It's the equivalent of the quarterback on defense... it's hard to get the same thing done with a safety of that caliber.

Herm Edwards will win significantly more games at Arizona State than people expect

I think he's going to be great at recruiting. I think he's going to be great with the players. I think he's going to win a lot more games than people give... I'm saying he's going to win significantly more than that. It's going to be surprising.

The Steelers and Vikings should be in the Super Bowl

I think the Steelers should be in the Super Bowl. I think the Steelers, when you look at what they can do offensively... And I like Minnesota. Home Super Bowl.