Quarterbacks and Leadership

Sometimes the culture does make the man.

What is there to learn from NFL quarterback TV shows about leadership and culture?

Maybe not much… which is a very bad pitch to keep reading.

Quarterback

I don’t like getting sucked into reality-driven series. But I hit the play button on Quarterback on Netflix and got…. sucked in.

Seeing Patrick Mahomes’ regimen was inspiring. He is tracking to be one of the top 3 NFL quarterbacks of all time, if he can stay healthy. More unexpected was Kirk Cousins’s mixture of vulnerability and grit. Cousins is sneaky good—and by passing yards is now one of the top 25 quarterbacks of all time. And climbing. The conversations between Cousins and his wife and children… you’d think he was a life insurance agent by how humble his home life is.

(Shout out to all you life insurance agents: you’re doing God’s work.)

Yes, the series is about how brutal and difficult the position is—but it’s also surprisingly illuminating about the interplay between talent, resilience, psychology, and leadership. You don’t get to 89% critics and 91% audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes without it being reasonably good TV.

Hard Knocks

Once I’d seen Quarterback, I wanted more.

I spent the last 15 years viscerally disliking Aaron Rodgers. Separate from his personal foibles, he crushed our hometown Chicago Bears for much of his 18 years with the Green Bay Packers—winning 24 games and losing only 5. The low point of that was in October of 2021. Rodgers rushed for a touchdown during the game. After scoring, he shouted at the Bears crowd: “All my f*cking life. I still own you. I still own you.”

The video is brutal—you have to read his lips to catch the first sentence.

After the game, some Packer fan quickly updated Wikipedia.

After that incident and a decade and a half of domination, I never dreamed I would develop affinity for Rodgers. It was an impossibility. Then I watched a few episodes of the HBO series Hard Knocks about the Jets training camp. He comes off as… wildly likable. After watching, I was genuinely bummed when he blew out his Achilles at the beginning of the season, a turn of events made more poignant after his remarkable entrance to the stadium to remember 9/11. In Hard Knocks, the sequence when mentalist Oz Pearlman visits the training camp is solid gold, and gives us a sliver of insight into Rodgers’s good cheer. Here is a snippet:

Just as impressive are the sequences from Hard Knocks on Rodgers’ skills at quarterback and his efforts to develop the backup QBs, which—given Zack Wilson’s performance so far this season—might have been to no avail.

Da Bears

In the years while Rodgers helmed the Packers, the Bears went through 16 quarterbacks. In the 16 years preceding Rodgers when the Packers started Brett Favre, the Bears went through 19 quarterbacks. That’s 35 Bears starting quarterbacks compared to 2 Packers quarterbacks during the same time period.

So it was deja vu at the beginning of this season when the Bears quarterback of the future, Justin Fields, faced off against the Packers quarterback of the future, Jordan Love.

Love and the Packers dominated Fields and the Bears. Love has thrown 7 touchdowns and 1 interception through 3 games, and the Packers are 2-1. Fields has thrown 3 touchdowns and 4 interceptions through 3 games, the Bears are 0-3, and the consensus is they’re the worst team in the league.

What gives? Is Love that much more talented than Fields? Is it the Bears coaching that has compromised Fields? Is it because of weaknesses on the rest of the team—like the offensive line—that Fields isn’t thriving? Is Fields another superlative college quarterback who can’t make reads fast enough for the NFL? Is it the Bears GM’s fault because he hired the wrong coach?

Might all of this be true, to varying degrees?

This is a rabbit hole of epic proportions being discussed ad nauseam in Chicago. I walked into a steam room two days ago and six guys were arguing about it. Like any steam room full of men, everyone was talking and perspiring, but no one was listening.

Maybe there is an answer here that eclipses any of the individuals we’re talking about.

It’s the culture

The Green Bay Packers have a great culture. The Chicago Bears do not.

The Kansas City Chiefs (now) have a great culture. The Chicago Bears do not.

Culture is the context in which individual and collective greatness can emerge. Especially when those individuals arrive at the age of 22.

But how do you define a great culture—in this football context, and more broadly?

From a startup leadership lens, I took a stab at this in an essay I wrote several years ago called “Creating Culture: An Imperfect Recipe.” Warning: it’s kinda long-winded.

From a football perspective, I don’t know the answer. So I did some research and found this gem. Initially I was thrilled by what I’d found. It took me a minute to realize it was satire.

So I kept looking, and focused my energy on a team that had turned its culture around: the Chiefs. I came across this article—and found this excerpt meaningful:

The culture in Kansas City is one of belonging and family. Players know that leaders are being honest with them in whatever they are told, and they respond positively to that authenticity by wanting to give their best efforts for that franchise. Everyone knows the NFL is a business first and foremost, but there are ways within that umbrella to engender very real connections and community.

It’s hidden in there: “leaders are being honest with them in whatever they are told.”

To me an uncelebrated hero of a strong culture is candor—creating an environment where people tell people the truth.

Last week, the defensive coordinator of the Bears resigned under a flurry of intrigue. A report emerged that his home had been raided by the FBI. It was all over the internet.

According to The Athletic, multiple Bears players confirmed that leadership never gathered the team to address the issue.

Ya know what I mean?

The Last Word: Patrick Mahomes

A mentor of mine once told me that in in our personal lives we learn more from our losses than our wins, but in our professional lives we learn more from our wins than our losses.

The Mahomes segments of Quarterback are a reminder of what can happen when the stars align—when a great player and a great culture collide. Mahomes is exceptional, and he has an exceptional team around him: a great wife, a great coach, a great trainer, great parents, great teammates.

Those things are all related. None of that is a coincidence.

The below clip is from the NFL Divisional playoffs, January 21st, 2023. The Chiefs are playing the Jaguars. Mahomes gets hurt. He wants to stay in the game. His coach wants him to get his ankle looked at before going back in. From the box, his wife is worried.

I love this scene. It doesn’t say it all. But it says so much.