The New England Patriots' culture has become a topic of conversation among NFL fans, thanks to former Patriots defensive end Cassius Marsh. Marsh, who briefly played for the team this past season, recently said there is "nothing fun" about playing for Bill Belichick's team.
"They asked me to do a bunch of stuff that I had never done: covering running backs and receivers and basically almost never rushing the passer, which is what I did in playing defensive line," Marsh said, according to Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle. "They don't have fun there. There's nothing fun about it. There's nothing happy about it. I didn't enjoy any of my time there, you know what I'm saying? It made me for the first time in my life think about not playing football because I hated it that much."
Eagles offensive tackle Lane Johnson had a similar take about New England.
"All the media wants to talk about is rings," Johnson said. "Rings. I'm going to get this ring and never wear it one day. I'm going to put it away in a box. The only thing you're going to remember from your playing days, you're not going to remember the scores. You're going to remember the people you played with and how you felt. And that's the truth. All these guys talking about, 'I'll take the rings.' OK. You can have your rings. You can also have [expletive] 15 miserable years."
In response, both current and former Pats players have stepped up to defend the culture.
Players that don’t like their Patriot experience are the ones that can’t take tough coaching, get eaten up by the pressure, blame others for failures and expect things are supposed to be given to them.
Team captain Devin McCourty said the culture is, in fact, good. As he told the Boston Herald:
If we go 0-16, it probably won’t be fun. I think now, you look at a team who beats us in the Super Bowl, and you get guys who are talking about it, that's front page news. Then Cassius leaves. He played here. He had a frustrating time here, so I don't expect him to leave and say he had a great time. But if you ask any guy on this team, (they'll say) the fun comes from hanging with each other...the relationships between the guys, a lot of our fun happens in the locker room before we even come out here and have fun winning football games.
Another of the Pats' captains, linebacker Dont'a Hightower, agreed with McCourty's assessment.
I know it's not for everybody. It’s definitely harder than most places, but that’s part of it. A lot of guys know that when they come here. In the locker room, it's not Bill's job to make this fun, this atmosphere fun, it's the guys around it. Every guy in that locker room I love like a brother. We have fun whether we're out here struggling together with blood, sweat and tears, or we're hanging out, outside of football. There's a time and place for everything. But we know when walk through the building, it's time to work.
This seems like a total non-story—of course, the Pats' culture is serious. Is that surprising to anyone? And of course, some guys like it and others don't.
Let's not force football into the news, at least until the NBA Finals are over.
