Joe Bucs Fan tries to climb into the mind of Bucs defensive coordinator Mike Smith by posting excerpts and/or highlights from Smith’s book, “You Win in the Locker Room”. He doesn’t think much of this part:
“The biggest theme in Smith’s book is all about ‘culture.’ Joe thinks this may be an empty word bordering on misleading. Every coach preaches culture. Hell, former Bucs commander Greg Schiano was huge on this. But what happened? It blew up in his face after some head-scratching personnel moves and a quarterback going mental.”
“If you have, say, Chucky drafting the players and Lovie Smith coaching the players, Joe doesn’t give a damn what kind of culture a guy preaches, no talent and not knowing how to use that talent will get you fired very quickly. It’s all about winning. Culture doesn’t mean a damned thing.”
There’s some truth to this. You certainly aren’t going anywhere without talent and good coaching.
But beyond that I have to disagree. Players interact as a group and anyone who has ever played competitive sports, hell anyone who has just been part of a crowd that watches competitive sports, knows that people feed off of one another in that type of environment.
Expectations are set in part by the people around you and what they do. If you are part of a group where the majority stay and do the extra work and put forth the extra effort to do the little things to win, you are much more likely to do that yourself. That maximizes talent and leads to a better chance of winning on the field.
I wouldn’t under-estimate the power that lies in this type of interaction. A core group of players doing the right thing can lead weaker members of the team onto the right path. That’s why the Patriots can, say, add Martellus Bennett and expect him to succeed where he failed with the Bears. They have a culture where such antics as his aren’t tolerated, not just by the coaches, but by a large group of veteran players who know how to win.
Establishing a “culture” of winning is a real thing. It’s something that can be the difference between a talented team that consistently finds victory and one that more often than not falls short.