A work in progress

Still have some work to do . . .

Building a strong football culture can take some time.

This is the time of year you hear a lot of culture talk.

You hear about free agents signing with new teams, and then telling the press the new team’s “culture” was one of the reasons they signed.

Former Chicago Bears running back David Montgomery, now the Detroit Lions, recently talked about how all the losing with the Bears over his four years with the team, dragged him down.

“That’s all I was used to,” Montgomery said. “And it got to a point where it sucked the fun out of the game for me because I’m a competitor. I like to compete. That’s what football’s about.”

However, new Chicago Bears, wide receiver D.J, Moore and linebacker Tremaine praised the culture.

A headline on May 23 on the Chicago Bears website – “Moore, Edmunds praise the culture at Halas Hall .”

The Bears were 3-14 last season, and 6-11 the season before.

What culture?

Don’t get me wrong, I think Bears GM Ryan Poles and head coach Matt Eberflus are smart guys and have a good plan to turn around the organization. They are both entering their second season running the show in Chicago.

I think the trade Poles made with the Carolina Panthers, to get a king’s ransom for the first overall pick in a draft, that lacked an elite QB prospect, was flat-out brilliant. In exchange for the first pick overall in the 2023 draft, Poles got the Panthers to send the Bears, Moore, the No. 9 pick, a second-round pick this year, a 2024 first-round pick and a second-round pick in 2025.

All this to put the Panthers in a position to pick a 5-10 QB, Bryce Young. I’m not saying you can play QB in the NFL at 5-10, but I’m sure as hell not sending a pirate’s treasure to another team to move to get the first pick in the draft to select one.

However, right now, coming off a 3-14 season, how can anybody say a team has a great culture?

You want to know what a great sports culture looks like, look at the NBA’s Miami Heat. They just made the NBA finals with one standout player, Jimmy Butler, and kind of an average roster around him.

The “Heat Culture” driven by Pat Riley for many years, is so strong, it often allows them to often do much better than people expect.

There was a lot of talk recently about how one reason that Aaron Rodgers wanted to come to the Jets was because of their culture.

I don’t agree. I think he came because of their strong roster. There is a difference.

The Jets’ culture, like most teams in the NFL, is a work in progress. It’s very hard for an objective observer to say a team has a strong culture that has missed the playoffs 12 years in a row, the longest current active streak in pro sports.

It’s hard to say you have a great culture when your first-round offensive tackle is kvetching about stuff on social media and in Newsday. Pat Riley calls this kind of behavior, “The disease of me.”

The Jets, like a lot of teams, still have some work to do on their culture.

May 30, 2023

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