Ashburn, Va. – Back in 2010, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder had some renovations made to FedEx Field. Two 100-foot high definition video boards (with 4.4 trillion shades of color, no less!) are now above each end zone. An additional 1,000 parking spaces were added for cash parking ($40 a pop) and new and better HD equipment was installed in the control room. And the new club level party decks were the highlights of the $20 million upgrade. But besides the installation of a memorial locker to the late, great safety Sean Taylor at the club level, no changes to the stadium were really made that directly affect the players’ comfort or training.
All of the changes made to the Redskins’ stadium were done so in order to enhance the game-day experience for the fans. That’s important to be sure. But eventually, the fans aren’t going to even come to games if the team continues to lose, no matter how great the arena is.
While most of the talk in the NFL these days is about upcoming roster moves, free agency and the draft, life goes on in the workplaces. Soon players will be reporting for strength and conditioning programs and OTAs (organized team activities). But it’s important that during this time when the players and the organization cannot have any contact, the Redskins’ front office makes sure that returning players as well as new ones they are bringing in have an upgraded attitude about the players themselves to sign on with as well.
An important facet of any successful football team is football satisfied players. The term “satisfied” does not necessarily mean wealthy or care-free, mind you. It means that they are glad to come to work and give 100 percent every day, and are at peace with their employer and workplace environment. If they work for an employer that “has their back,” there is a better chance of success. This, in part, translates into a workplace with the proper facilities and an attitude of employers that says they care about the satisfaction of its employees.
For instance, I have been told that team President Bruce Allen is pretty good at is trying to keep coaches from working so much that they hardly see their families. That is a good thing. But is he like that with the players or is Jay Gruden? What is the head coach’s philosophy on family in general? Players need to work hard but they also are men and men need to know their families are taken care of. It’s in their DNA… at least it’s in most men’s DNA.
There is a step the front office could take to let players know they are important and valued as more than just commodities, something many players feel. This offseason, Allen could concentrate on providing an actual physical space FOR the families of the players.
At FedEx Field, there are no facilities to accommodate the players’ families when they come to watch their sons, brothers, fathers, boyfriends or husbands play. There isn’t a lounge or spot where they can congregate and hang out either during games or as they wait for their players after the final whistle. Anyone who has been at the stadium after a game and has walked by the players’ parking has no doubt seen a lot of people standing or milling around near the cars regardless of the weather or the time of day or night. What they might not be aware of is that most of those folks are the families of players who have been at the game.
Sometimes those individuals, many with smaller kids, have to wait for a couple of hours after the game has ended before they see their men and they have to do it outside, again, regardless of the weather or the time. As a media person, there have been times after games when I did not leave the locker room/interview room area until an hour-and-a-half or two hours after the game was over. If there are players still in the locker room, then it’s highly probable that they have family members waiting for them somewhere that have come to see them play.
There are other stadiums in the league that do have some sort of lounge or designated room for family members. For instance, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey; CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington; M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland; Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri and the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona all have a dedicated place for families to wait INSIDE for the players.
Head coach Bruce Arians and the Arizona Cardinals’ management puts a premium on player’s families being around.
“B.A. actually talks about it,” former Redskins linebacker and special teams beast Lorenzo Alexander said recently. “He encourages it. He’s always making sure that you know that he knows that your family is important. If you’ve got kids of a certain age, they can come around, no problem. It’s very family oriented… you’re free to bring them around.”
Alexander did not say that players could not do this at Redskins Park. He said that if a player asked if a child or family member could watch a practice, it might be allowed out in Ashburn. But in Arizona, it is encouraged by Arians. There’s a big difference between the two things. Arian and his coaching staff clearly understand that if a player has issues at home, he’s not going to be able to produce well on the field.
There is a special emphasis on family during Christmas with a special “Family Day” practice and there are a few scattered during the year and at training camp. NFL Coaches in general will certainly let players take time to deal with family issues when needed but not, perhaps, without generating some guilt on the player’s part. Arians is not one of those coaches.
This is not to say that players should be coddled. They just need to be shown that their organization cares about them. Positive vibes beget positive vibes and that can beget a players’ best effort. A player’s best effort can possibly beget more winning. Care can be shown in how players’ families are treated
One former long-time Redskins player told me that in Hall of Fame head coach Joe Gibbs’ second tenure here, when he first met a player he would not only make sure he knew his name, he would have them write down his wife’s name, his kids’ name and his home phone number so that he could get to know them and their families. He also would set up a big circus-like tent at times so that guys could bring their families to games or practice. He would cater lunch and spend time getting to know the important people in his players’ lives.
I talked to several players who couldn’t emphasize enough how important it was for them to be able to take care of their families during a long season where there is already a lot of disconnect due to long hours put in on the job. The idea of some sort of family room at the stadium and the importance that the front office could place on families was championed. The same former Redskin feels that the lack of these things may be part of the reason the recent Redskins teams haven’t had the unity they could have. A feeling of unity of closeness seems to be something very much underrated in setting up a winning organization.
“If you come to the stadium, and say the weather’s bad,” my former Redskin friend said as he explained the concept of a family room with passion, “the players’ families can take their kids or take themselves out of the weather and go to the family room and watch the game from there. It’s also set up to build relationships. A lot of these wives and girlfriends don’t even know each other like that. It builds closeness. They get a chance to talk to each other in the family room and get to know each other. When they’re in the stadium they’re spread out and about and so don’t really get a chance to talk. In there they can say, ‘hey, I’m so-and-so’s wife’ or ‘Hi, I’m so-and-so’s mom.’ And not only that, they get a chance to get some food and don’t have to spend a bunch of money at the concessions because believe it or not, not all football players are rolling in the dough, y’know? They can go in there and take care of their little ones. And what that does is make them feel like they’re part of something… part of the ‘The Family.’ Their husband’s out there breaking his neck on the field but his family’s getting taken care of outside of that. And then they can wait there until their husband or son or boyfriend is finished in the locker room with interviews and stuff. He can go get them in the family room and say ‘let’s go.’”
Granted, there are many younger players on teams all over the NFL now that don’t have huge families that they’re bringing to games. But they still need to come to work knowing again, that they are valued as people, not just commodities. Bruce Allen and owner Dan Snyder might take some time to tour different facilities and stadiums and compare how Redskins Park and FedEx Field stack up.
An upgraded or well-maintained facility means the players are important. There were several important renovations made out at Redskins Park in August 2013 during former head coach Mike Shanahan’s tenure. They included a new and upgraded cafeteria, an expanded weight room; and new and better treatment facilities like hot and cold tubs and an underwater treadmill. Shanahan also finally got his regulation-size indoor practice field and facility (aka, “The Bubble”) as well as an infrastructure upgrade to fully digital playbooks and film study (aka “the players’ iPads”). This is a good thing because players want to work in a nice facility with up-to-date equipment. MetLife Stadium is one of the more gorgeous facilities and Giants’ players love it.
“MetLife is honestly gorgeous. The atmosphere throughout the locker room and the whole building is really positive,” offensive lineman Selvish Capers, formerly a Redskins and then Giants player said recently in an interview. “Everything is done first class. The facility is beautiful… the food, the weight room, the locker room, the training room, the treatment facilities like the whirlpool… just all first class. It was a great place to work and a great opportunity.”
Another thing Capers said was that in the locker room, all of the position groups’ lockers were grouped together without exception. This is hugely important for cohesiveness within the team. While most teams try to do this, the Redskins appear to only loosely follow this strategy. It was interesting to see Redskins’ linebacker Ryan Kerrigan and tight end Logan Paulsen’s lockers down at the end of the room while linebackers Will Compton and running back Roy Helu Jr. were at the other end. Perhaps the players are grouped by former colleges since both Compton and Helu are former Nebraska Cornhuskers?
If the staff purposely puts different skill positions together in the locker room to ensure different guys get to know each other, ok. But that’s going to happen anyway according to the long-time Redskin I spoke to. It would be best, he said, if DBs were with DBs, O-linemen were near O-linemen, etc.
If a linebacker needs to talk to another linebacker about a play or something, he should not have to walk across the locker room to do it.
“If you build closeness within each group, they’re going to perform better together,” he said. “When you’re on that field playing, it’s a big deal to know how that guy next to you thinks. I want to know how he thinks. I want to know his girlfriend’s name. I want to know his wife’s name. I’ll tell you what, I was so close to my teammates back in the day that, when we were out on the field, we would actually use our wives’ and girlfriend’s names for certain plays we ran. When we had left and right calls like ‘left-left, right-right’ we’d use our wives’ names like, ‘Linda-Linda.’ The other team doesn’t know who that is. So I’d know my teammate was coming my way. And I’d look at him and say, ‘Sarah-Sarah-Sarah’ and that would mean we were going to the right. But the opponent doesn’t know what we’re talking about because there was no ‘L’ or ‘R’ word that would give them a head’s up. But that’s the closeness we had where we could use our wives’ or girlfriends’ or kids’ names… whatever. And we all knew what we were talking about. These players can’t do that now if they’re not close enough.”
Even young players that don’t necessarily have a large family coming to games knew the importance of unity in the locker room and how it could translate onto the scoreboard.
Redskins’ have a young, very talented cornerback, Trey Wolfe, on their practice squad (and who will likely end up on the 53-man roster once they see him work in training camp) who was with the Seattle Seahawks before he came to Washington. It’s interesting that he said that, while the Seahawks training facility is a little newer, more modern and a little bigger, he likes the cafeteria and the practice fields better at Redskins Park. There’s a little something else he also likes a lot about Washington’s facility…
“When you walk into the Redskins’ facility you’ve got three Super Bowl Champion symbols,” Wolfe said enthusiastically. “Those Lombardi Trophies look nice in the front so you’ve got to like that.”
Even at his young age however, he echoed what the former Redskin veteran said about unity.
“I do,” he said when asked if grouping a specific skill together in the locker room was important to cohesiveness within the unit, “because it’s like a brotherhood in there. Everybody’s really close. [Seahawks] [cornerback] Richard Sherman, [strong safety] Kam Chancellor and [free safety] Earl Thomas all took me under their wing and were really helping me out a lot. And they do that here too. [Safeties] Ryan Clark and Brandon Meriweather definitely took me under and were showing me how to be a pro and teaching me the minor things as far as what to look for on film and what to study and about the playbook, things like that. But they were a maybe just a little bit more close knit out there in Seattle. But these guys here definitely took me under their wing and showed a lot of interest.”
Out at the training facility, Trey Wolfe’s locker was across the room from Clark, Meriweather, and cornerbacks David Amerson and DeAngelo Hall’s as was safety Phillip Thomas’. Perhaps this is because he didn’t sign until November and because he was on the practice squad. But up-and-comer cornerback Bashaud Breeland’s was across from the vets as well. The young DB mentioned that he would have liked to have been closer to his mentors and unit teammates.
“It kind of makes a slight difference,” he said when asked to grade the level of importance that being near his position group was. “I mean, I’m not complaining at all but it would have been good to be around David, Ryan and D. Hall so we could talk easily about plays and stuff instead of having to get up and walk across the locker room. So, yea… it made a minor difference. And that may not be much but in this business, every little bit helps.”
Could what Wolfe and the former Redskins player said about unity within the locker room be a factor in the lack of success Washington has had in recent years? It could have contributed although certainly not in and of itself. But with General Manager Scot McCloughan now having the better portion of scouting/personnel duties, Bruce Allen might take some time to consider making whoever lands on the team for the 2015 season as comfortable as possible so that “every little bit” can help.
Hail.