How much do off-the-field issues in the NFL influence performance on the field?
Or is professional football merely a numbers game where the stats override the storylines?
I believe its more that most of these guys realize they are commodities. Many of us when we look back on our careers can find periods of time where our employers or clients just saw us as a cog in a wheel, a means to an end. The guys and gals at the top get all the glory, they are the ones who get the credit for things. You see this a lot in business where the CEO or some other high-ranked person says "I did X" or "I created X" and its all bullshit, some guy three levels below him came up with the idea and a bunch of others at the lower levels did the grinding to get the product out. They often get next to no credit, the top guy if you're lucky says my team helped, but some egotistical "leaders" don't even do that, they act like its all them.
So when a team wins a lot of games or even wins a title, its always one or two players who get the majority of the credit and of course some coach or GM as well. All well and good, but if you are a key contributor but not a "name" you just realize the team and the majority of people think of you as some replaceable part. Yeah you're paid well, but if you don't frame the situation properly you can feel like shit and think what's the point of all this? These people don't value me, I just sat in one of dozens of chairs that no one cared about.
www.espn.com
