In the past, if a person was a shady character or considered a funny character, there was universal clarity as to what was meant. More recently, considerable attention has been paid to football “character,” on which there’s often outright confusion.
Even Broncos coach Mike Shanahan bounces between agreeing with its importance, or annoyance talking about it. Yes, Shanahan said, good character is a necessity, and a team can’t win championships without it, he said.
Just as quickly he realized there is a touch of absurdity in any blanket statement.
“It’s funny,” he said. “When you win, everybody talks about what good character you have. When you lose, everybody talks about the poor character on your football team. There’s a fine line there.”
The Broncos must have had some bad characters last year. Unequivocal proof comes from their 7-9 record. Through their offseason moves, the Broncos acknowledged they needed to place greater emphasis on character when evaluating players.
Todd Sauerbrun, Javon Walker, Ian Gold and Travis Henry were all let go for some degree of attitudinal reasons, not talent. At the recent NFL draft, the Broncos had DeSean Jackson, the most talented returner/receiver on the board, available to them with the No. 42 pick, but instead took Eddie Royal, a returner/receiver whose makeup was rated as highly as his ability.
Outside the cocoon at Dove Valley, there is a sense the Broncos may have gotten worse this offseason. It feels quite different on the inside.
“It does feel better in the locker room,” said veteran receiver Brandon Stokley, who played on Super Bowls in Baltimore and Indianapolis. “When you see what some bad apples can do to a team, and you realize how bad it can get, you realize you can’t have that. You can’t bring those kind of guys in.”
Stokley didn’t name names, and who would? In recent years, the Broncos had perceived that receivers Ashley Lelie and Walker put their own statistical and financial concerns above the team’s interests. Wanting the ball may be considered a bad football characteristic, but does it make them bad people?
Randy Moss and Terrell Owens are considered the game’s most talented receivers. They are also considered the receivers with the riskiest character issues, at least until Chad Johnson went public with his pouting this offseason. The combined regular-season record of Moss’s New England Patriots and Owens’ Dallas Cowboys last season? 29-3.
How much blame, then, should bad character receive in the Broncos’ 7-9 season?
“The thing is, everything’s good in the offseason,” said Champ Bailey, the Broncos’ star cornerback. “When the season starts and you’re not winning, things change. There are a lot of reasons you can choose to explain losing. The only way we’re going to have a good locker room is by winning. When you win, you don’t have a lot of bickering and talking about the coaches. But it’s still early. Let’s just get better as a team.”
“C” word now the buzzword
It’s almost impossible for teams to agree about something so nebulously defined as character, but football agent Joe Linta may have come up with a two-question formula for evaluating it.
The first question Linta asks when interviewing prospective clients is: What would you do with your first $2 million signing bonus?
“If you get something other than a self-centered, material purchase, it tells you the kid is somewhat selfless,” said Linta. “If it’s, ‘I’m going to get something for my family, my mom, my grandma. Charity. I’m going to invest. ‘ Anything other than, ‘ I’m going to get myself a new Lexus or something material’ is very telling about the character of the person.”
And the second question?
“A lot of scouts look at me like I have two heads when I tell them this, but sometime during the conversation, I’ll say something like, ‘Boy, that’s nice of you to think like that. You must go to church.’ ”
Almost always, that interrogation brings the discussion to a pause. Church?
“Name me a kid of college age who goes to church on his own volition and is a bad person,” Linta said. “I’m not a God-squadder by any means. I’m a closet Catholic at best. But I have found in the last three or four years that I’ve done this, that it’s been a 1-to-1 correlation of success in evaluating character.”
Linta adds that a young man can be of good character without going to church. But maybe that’s Roger Goodell’s fundamental problem in trying to clean up the NFL’s image: Too many games are played on Sundays.
“I don’t think we’re ever going to have a bunch of choirboys,” Broncos safety John Lynch said. “That’s in life, and a football team is no different than life. But you can have football character.
“I’ve noticed in the way Mike has talked, he’s using character as a buzzword now. He’s using it a lot more.”
Close to a title, take a risk
Character has become a clear priority for the Broncos this year, but what happens if they again reach the brink of the Super Bowl, as they did in 2005? The Broncos played in the AFC championship game that year, and in his quest to find that one player who would push him to the top, perhaps Shanahan was more willing to exchange talent for character risk.
He entertained T.O. at his home at a time when T.O. was one of the most ostracized players in the league. Walker was a malcontent in Green Bay before he became a malcontent in Denver. Henry had a troubled off-field history before he brought his off-field problems to Denver a year ago.
But before blaming Shanahan for making deals with the football devil, think the Patriots would have taken an 18-0 record into the Super Bowl last year had Bill Belichick not taken a chance on Moss? Look at the Cowboys. They not only signed Owens, who helped them become 13-3 last year, but now they’re taking a chance on Adam “Pacman” Jones, the league’s poster child for bad behavior.
Why? The Cowboys came close, but didn’t make it to the Super Bowl. Would the Cowboys have risked acquiring Pacman had they come off a 3-13 season?
“Winning affects everything,” Bailey said. “If you want to say good character is going to help us win, I’m all for it.”
