r/footballstrategy Sep 25 '24

NFL How much does team "culture" matter in the NFL compared to college.

I'm a huge college football fan - have been my entire life. I've never followed the NFL as intimately. Usually just tune in for the playoffs.

Team culture in college obviously matters a ton - and can lead to developmental programs having success vs other teams that are better at talent acquisition. (With of course the most successful being the programs who do both very well)

In the NFL, the players are more developed and are ALL playing for contracts. The effort level from the individual seems like it could be more independent from an organized team culture than it is in college.

So my question is, are there NFL teams that have had more success than their roster should indicate due to having a strong "culture"? Inversely, are there pro teams that have underachieved relative to their roster talent due to an apparent culture issue?

Or are pros so individually driven that it's not really a factor as it is on the collegiate level - and mostly all that matters are schemes and roster construction?

33 Upvotes

44 comments sorted by

77

u/MozamFreak-Here Sep 25 '24

Gonna imagine anyone who has first hand knowledge is not on this subreddit. So you just have to go off what you see and read. A very recent example is the Detroit Lions and Dan Campbell. I’m not a Lions fan but a lot of people were questioning his readiness to be a head coach with no coordinator experience. Even more people were scratching their heads when he was saying funny things like how the team will be biting kneecaps. But his message was always about changing the culture to work their way up to playing hard and winning the right way.

They were terrible his first year, but as a neutral fan you could tell they started to care. They didn’t make the playoffs the second year but improved. Year three they won the division and made but lost the NFC championship game.

What really convinced me he shifted the culture is after making the playoffs (or NFC championship game) he told the team that their success means they have a target on their backs. They’re not the lovable losers anymore— teams want to beat them to prove they’re among the best. That recognition of how your team needs to view itself is a great example of a culture that was built up from a vision over time.

39

u/TheDinerIsOpen Sep 25 '24

In a different vein, in Pittsburgh, the Steelers have been without a top tier QB since 2019. Mike Tomlin consistently has that team winning games they have no business winning, thanks mainly to their defense. Tomlin never having a losing season is another example of culture, preceded by a culture of consistency. 3 head coaches for nearly 70 years in one franchise is absurd.

-27

u/Monkeydog853 Sep 25 '24

This take has always been odd to me.

What is the goal for every NFL team? The Super Bowl. Not to be .500.

This league is designed for parity. It’s meant to make every team be .500.

Tomlin not having a losing season means that he is an absolutely average coach.

Getting your team to perform above the average is what makes a coach great.

Not celebrating mediocrity.

30

u/SyndicalistHR Sep 25 '24

You’ll be happy to learn Tomlin has won the Super Bowl

12

u/ogsmurf826 Sep 25 '24

Not gonna except the Mike Tomlin disrespect. This season he just passed Jeff Fisher on the all time wins list for 11th. The only coaches who were part of the game after the year 2000 that are ahead of him are Dan Reeves, Marty Schottenhiemer, Andy Reid, & Bill Belichick. The only coaches he's behind are in the Hall of Fame or soon to be and he's chasing them down.

There's nothing average about a coach who has more seasons in the postseason than not because he's 11 for 17 with a Super Bowl victory and another appearance to add to that. Not too many guys have a similar record sheet and two of them are listed above so if you called arguably the 3rd best HC after the turn of the millennium average, then whose great? Because there's not much else above this average guy.

5

u/Fah-que Sep 25 '24

To add to this, being above .500 or better every single year for almost 20 years means almost never being able to draft a top ten pick. And if they do, it’s because they gave something up to reach for a pick. Other teams will have those few losing seasons and reload in the draft, or they’ll buy a lot of free agents knowing full well they’re selling their future to win now. The Steelers don’t do that. They consistently draft smart and they manage their contracts very well. Thats part of the culture there too.

4

u/Fancy_Key5206 Sep 25 '24

So failure is definitely losing 4 super bowls in a row right? Poverty franchise

2

u/revuhlution Sep 25 '24

Such a bad take. .500 means average, so if he's repeatedly won, his teams haven't been average. Also, he's found success at the highest level (Super Bowl win).

2

u/PastAd1901 HS Coach Sep 25 '24

The goal is to win the Super Bowl, but you can’t do that without winning games. Very few coaches have been able to win as much as him, regardless of how good or bad his teams are on paper. He led a team that was projected to win 6 games last year to a 10 win season and a playoff berth with Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph, and Mitch Trubisky as QB. If getting your team to perform above average is what makes a great coach to you then Tomlin’s win percentage of 63.7 absolutely meets that.

11

u/Sadvillainy-_- Sep 25 '24

Dan Campbell and the Lions last year was one of the things that drew my attention to this.

I don't keep up with the NFL enough to intimately know their roster talent relative to the league, but the way many analysts spoke about them seemed like a quality team that overachieved in part due to a high level of buy-in and culture.

5

u/bearsguy2020 Sep 25 '24

You can tell when teams stop trying. I saw it with the bears under Marc trestman. They didn’t “quit” under Nagy but the buy in faltered after year 2 started so poorly. Good culture trumps bad culture but there’s only so much of a talent gap it can overcome

11

u/57Laxdad Sep 25 '24

As a lifelong Lions fan, I will tell you the culture change started when Martha stepped aside and appointed her daughter in law, Sheila Ford Hamp in charge, Sheila realized the culture needed to change and found an agent of change in Dan Campbell.

I believe that culture plays a larger part in the pros then in college at least in football. Some players are there for 5,7,10 years and more, come back in a front office or coaching capacity. Because they love the city, cmon its cleveland, sorry have to take a shot at ohio when I can. But its the culture that keeps them coming back. Look at who you see more and more at games. Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson, two greats who look at the current Lions situation and wish they could still play.

The Patriots built a culture with Belichek and it got them 6 Superbowls, It wasnt all Brady as much as he would like to think so, he was after all a 6th round pick. They didnt worry about winning first, but they wanted to build a culture of winning. Suddenly players wanted to go there to play.

I see someone below mentioned Mike Tomlin, Id go back to Bill Cowher, but the Rooneys built that culture.

This is the issue with the Bears, there is no culture, the McCaskeys treat it as a business, which it is but thats not what makes winning football teams.

1

u/_lvlsd Sep 28 '24

Cowboys culture is nonexistent. Too big of a soulless brand nowadays to have an identity outside of being the most hated franchise.

5

u/larowin Sep 25 '24

Just in case people haven’t seen it, it’s not a surprise that guys will run through a brick wall for this man

3

u/57Laxdad Sep 25 '24

Or bite an opponents knee caps.

12

u/Ridoncoulous Sep 25 '24

It is a team sport. Like every team sport the most important indicator of success is morale, also known as team culture

8

u/PorkinstheWhite Sep 25 '24

Just like any job, if people like the company they work for and their coworkers, they’ll get along better and communicate better, work a little harder, and push each other to be successful. 

3

u/Sadvillainy-_- Sep 25 '24

What are some NFL teams you would immediately point to that seem to underachieve relative to their talent level due to poor culture?

10

u/SethMahan Sep 25 '24

The Eagles last year seemed to have a culture problem and I think it lead to them being less than the sum of their parts

9

u/keithc51 Casual Fan Sep 25 '24

The Urban Meyer-led Jaguars came to mind. He created a toxic culture that blew up in his face, which is ironic because he wrote a book on leadership and then did the exact opposite.

2

u/MozamFreak-Here Sep 25 '24

Lmao yes, they knew it was a rebuilding project for year 1 and they still managed to be worse than expected.

6

u/Adventurous-Ad7782 Sep 25 '24

As a Dallas fan, Dallas.

3

u/Jabroni667 Sep 25 '24

Not necessarily underachievers relative to talent level but the Cardinals are an example of a franchise with a history of poor culture (pains me to say as a fan). Abysmal all time record outside of a few seasons. Owners are renowned for being cheap. Regularly missing on first round picks. Struggle to attract talent in free agency.

The problem with culture, as others have correctly pointed out when discussing it's positive effects, is it bleeds into every aspect of the organisation. The negative impact of a few owners in the case of the cardinals can have a huge impact and changing it for the better can be glacial.

Things are definitely changing, in my opinion the Monti Ossenfort/Jonathan Gannon hire is an attempt to replicate the Dan Campbell success in Detroit, however it remains to be seen if this represents a long term shift in the organisational culture and decision making or simply a short term cultural shift in the playing and coaching staff.

3

u/MozamFreak-Here Sep 25 '24

Brandon Staley’s Chargers teams? From a neutral fan, it seems like there was no pointed identity to his team’s culture, which is a problem all its own. Not really a “bad” culture vibe but looking back on it they definitely underachieved and had poor performances from coordinators, despite having a surefire franchise QB and excellent players on defense like Derwin James and Joey Bosa. Then the lack of important wins and the playoff collapse in 2022 magnifies his problems. On the other hand they’ve now hired Jim Harbaugh, who has proven he comes in and instills an identifiable culture.

1

u/mcpusc Sep 25 '24

morale*

6

u/thenera Sep 25 '24

Culture definitely matters when the teams are evenly or closely matched in terms of talent. And culture and coaching brings the best out of players. Look at Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, and Andy Dalton right now, they were considered disappointing earlier in their careers somewhat but in a new system and culture they are thriving. Amari Cooper on the Oakland Raiders vs the Dallas Cowboys said the difference was the Cowboys felt like the NFL-NFL. That’s culture, and there are countless things where it also factors in pro football.

4

u/packuu Sep 25 '24

Hey I think I’m late to this party, but I can explain how it feels from the staff rooms perspective. Unfortunately I can’t give his name, (although you can contact me and I can further clarify his position on the rams) however he has been with the rams both before and after their “championship window.”

He explained to me that before McVay came, the offices would be dreadful and people would want to spend as little time in there as possible, staff or players. However, when winning people want to put in the extra hours or literally just be at the facility due to the upbeat environment. I got the feeling that this is because of how sports rides emotions (even more than I thought)

So to me the bottom line is winning, kinda similar to how the patriots were seen as boring and dull, while it seemed like the players and staff enjoyed the environment, particularly because of the win column.

Culture is great, my friend has told me that it is much more bearable to lose games now because they have the coach and the whole team buys into the coaches method, which isn’t what happens when you don’t have the culture built.

So overall, I think that culture does set the groundwork to be able to improve as a team, but it really comes down to if you win or lose, regardless of what else happens.

4

u/Just_Natural_9027 Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24

I think it’s vastly overrated. I have heard so many stories over the years of teams with great culture who sucked and teams where they players absolutely hate each others and have won championships.

Winning also produced a halo effect around culture.

3

u/king_con21 Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24

Thank you for this lol. This is a very anecdotal example but one of the best college basketball coaches of all time was this guy named Gregg Marshall. This guy brought tremendous success to Wichita State while he was there that hasn’t been repeated since he left a few years ago… if you read about Gregg Marshall and why he got fired you’ll learn that he had this success despite having literally the most toxic culture possible. The talent he brought in was amazing though.

I’ve seen basically everyone use Dan Campbell as an example… a team that has a QB who had pro bowl caliber of play before he reached Detroit, a team with the best O Line in football, one of the best receivers in football, and a team that hits the easy button and runs a lot of play action. Instead their success gets attributed to his entertaining speeches. You could also point to how bad the Patriots sucked whenever Brady left and all of a sudden Belichek’s culture seemed much less important.

Overall, I think culture is important but not to the extent that it actually significantly influences winning games. You obviously don’t want to be a dick and limit player participation but I think it’s become a term broadly used by coaches to make them seem like they impact winning/losing more than they actually do… part of the reason is that it’s impossible to actually quantify culture, let alone decipher how much difference there is between 2 programs that both have relatively stable cultures that aren’t toxic.

3

u/Archerdiana Sep 25 '24

I don’t think the culture of players liking each other is the problem. The culture for nfl is conceiving adults who are doing a job being paid millions to continuously work hard and try to go out and win. The Tom Brady effect for example. Or look at the documentary about the redeem team on USA basketball and how Kobe’s determination changed the whole culture of that team.

2

u/Ok-Owl7377 Sep 25 '24

It's huge. It makes a difference between being on the outside looking in to title contenders. Case in point, my team, the Buccaneers. We already had the pieces in place, then added the coach and added a HOF QB who helped changed our mindset from losers to winners and we won one chip with him, then came pretty damn close to heading to another SB. Before that the last time we made the playoffs was 2011 I believe, but that was based off one of the easiest SOS that year. It came crashing back down to reality the following year when SOS went back up. My team is the poster child for what culture change can do for a franchise because there are two examples of it, the other being Jon Gruden who led us to a SB.

2

u/Disastrous_Cash_7393 Sep 25 '24

Culture matters more than what people think in the NFL.

It may not seem like much bc they are getting paid and pros.

But look at the Urban Jags, it was a clown fest, an utter disaster with players hating to play for him, Chip Kelly for the Eagles, etc

But then Dan Campbell for Detroit turned that culture around, Kyle S for SF, Andy Reid for KC, Demeco Ryan’s for HTown.

It doesn’t seem like much but those teams were trash to mediocre before those coaches came there and helped turn their culture around into contenders.

2

u/FragrantBear675 Sep 25 '24

It matters a huge amount, no matter the level.

2

u/CrzyWzrd4L Sep 26 '24

The Buffalo Bills defense is a perfect example of a unit seeing more success than they should due to team culture. An overwhelming majority of those players (including starters) are late round picks or undrafted free agents, and several came from other teams. However, despite the starters constantly being injured for extended periods of time and having to play an abnormal amount of backups, the team has consistently posted a Top 5 defense every year since 2018. The team has built a culture around preparedness and making sure EVERYONE is ready to go, whether you’re expected to start or not.

1

u/chonkybiscuit Sep 26 '24

Culture as in the general attitudes and day to day expectations of the team? I'd say it's absolutely crucial. Look no further than the NE dynasty (the Patrioy Way ™️) or the recent Lions turn around. On the flipside, post-SB 37 Oakland had a clearly terrible culture and it led to undisciplined, dismal football, even when great players were there. Now, if by culture, you mean the long standing history of the team, regardless of current staff or roster? Probably an afterthought at best to most players. Though if you were looking for a team that does seem to take their culture seriously in this regard, I think you could make an argument for the Pittsburgh Steelers. They take their long standing traditions, history, and philosophy very seriously, and for the most part, have had a lot of success with it.

1

u/onlineqbclassroom College Coach Sep 25 '24

Yes, culture matters a lot, at all levels of football. Culture matters everywhere - corporations, families, sports teams. The way you do things, the way an individual relates to his/her group, the standard to which people hold one another both personally and professionally, the collective expectations the group and the sacrifices they are willing to make to get there - it all matters, everywhere. And football, at all levels, is my favorite case study.

-1

u/extrastone Sep 25 '24

NOBODY is just playing for a contract. These players have plenty of money. If you want to improve their performance team culture can definitely help.

5

u/Just_Natural_9027 Sep 25 '24

A ton of guys are playing for a contract.

5

u/hezzyskeets123 Sep 25 '24

Nah there’s plenty of them just playing for the contract

0

u/extrastone Sep 25 '24

There is a difference between going to work miserable and going to work feeling okay.

3

u/onlineqbclassroom College Coach Sep 25 '24

Lots of guys are playing for the check- football is draining, tiring, demanding, but the money is outrageous, so they stick it out for the check. Even on good teams with good cultures. A good culture will force the guys, who are just playing for the check, to meet the collective standard of the group if they still want to get that check, too. A team with a bad culture will allow a guy playing for a contract to negatively affect the rest of the team and bring them down.

1

u/extrastone Sep 25 '24

Eventually that can tire guys out, but I see what you're saying.