‘Character Counts’

The news about Vincent Jackson’s suspension calls to mind a lesson about how teams operate …

In April 2008, after six seasons with the Broncos, I interviewed with the Panthers and began getting to know another NFL franchise from its inside out.

It didn’t take long — halfway into my tour of the stadium, as I was shown the locker room — for the first lesson from one of the team’s executives who shepherded me around the place:

“Character counts in this organization.”

The executive proceeded to recall the long-expired portions of team history I already knew — the franchise quarterback who nearly drank himself out of the league and quit on the team, the ill-fated running back who yanked his crotch during an end-zone celebration, the wide receiver who arranged the murder of his pregnant girlfriend before hiding in a car trunk.  Quite infamously, even the cheerleaders weren’t immune.

I nodded my head as the executive spoke; he recounted the cursory facts of each story, but I already knew the innate details, all building to his point about the club’s team-building philosphy: that it would rather try to find the good citizen who can turn up the intensity at game time rather than the miscreant who is always intense and can’t always downshift when he leaves the football realm.

Through those experiences of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Carolina learned what Atlanta would eventually learn in the wake of Michael Vick, DeAngelo Hall and Bobby Petrino, and what the Broncos learned after Eddie Kennison, Travis Henry, Brandon Marshall, Maurice Clarett and others.

“Character counts.”

Most criminal mis-steps don’t have much impact on the locker room. Have a football team of children with nearly as many women? Drive drunk? When it comes to football itself, these missteps, for many years, didn’t affect the team dynamic, not as long as the player in question showed up at the facility on time, stays in shape and doesn’t let down his teammates.

But quit on your team, like Eddie Kennison did to the Broncos in 2001? That shreds the threads connecting the players in a locker room; that clearly impacts wins and losses. Get accused of stealing money from a teammate like Albert Connell in New Orleans? Same thing.  Certain transgressions are unpardonable sins in the locker room — and they’re not necessarily the ones that draw the biggest headlines.

In the last two years, thanks to the tougher disciplinary policy enacted by the commissioner’s office, those other missteps DO affect wins and losses.  The San Diego Chargers and Vincent Jackson are about to learn this (assuming they don’t trade him).

THIS ISN’T A DEBATE ON THE FAIRNESS OF THE PUNISHMENTS meted by Roger Goodell; all we truly know is that he’s created more work for the league office and himself by serving as judge and jury beyond local, state and federal court systems.

What it does show is that the Broncos had the right idea in increasing their emphasis on character the last 18 months, whether related to attitude or criminal issues. They weren’t the first, because for NFL organizations, these lessons don’t take until the cost of embarrassment outweighs the benefit of keeping character issues within the organization.

“Character counts.”

In Dove Valley, this is the case; win or lose, it’s a group of good men, one of which the community can be proud to have representing it.

For the teams that will in the future change to follow the character-above-all mantra, the motivation isn’t just about wanting a team of decent citizens. It’s about both bottom lines: wins and losses, profit and red ink, and the couplets are connected to each other, since wins = playoffs = revenue = profit.

If the Chargers miss the playoffs by a game or two, and they start 1-2 or 0-3 without Jackson, it’s clear where the blame will fall. (Well, there or on the head coach, but at some point you’ve got to give Norv Turner credit for becoming the first coach since Don Coryell to lead the franchise to three consecutive division titles.)

“Character counts.”

And now it counts in every bottom-line manner imaginable.

* (And I know the counter argument to Carolina’s character emphasis: Steve Smith. A valid point, given the punch he threw to Ken Lucas in 2008. But he did the right thing immediately afterward — he apologized; he repented; he didn’t complain about the two-game suspension. Because of his penitence, the fissures healed and the team actually emerged stronger, winning 12 games that year. Being too emotional in the realm of football or making shaky decisions is an issue with Smith; character is not.)

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