How a Business Book, of All Things, Drove the 2018 Bears to Success

Whenever people talk about books in regards to the game of football, everybody immediately assumes they mean the playbook. That vast inventory of various plays and formations that coaches craft to help players maximize their potential as an offense or defense on the field. The Chicago Bears have their own sets of those just like everyone else. However, it seems it wasn't those books alone that defined 2018 for them. Last year GM Ryan Pace came across a book written by Wall Street Journal editor and former sports columnist Sam Walker called "The Captain Class." Pace, who was going into his third season in charge and had yet to see his team produce a winning record was researching every avenue possible for information on how he could elevate the Bears further. It was a book that picked the brains of some of the captains from the most successful teams in sports history including Tom Brady, Tim Duncan, Jack Lambert, and Bill Russell among others. The idea is that there was a certain style of leadership that characterized winning teams and it wasn't necessarily the in-your-face shouting style most people attribute to football. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO2MLsMvaOA&t=3s

The book has become popular throughout the Chicago Bears locker room

Pace was so taken by the book that he chose to give a copy to Mitch Trubisky shortly after the Bears drafted him last April. Trubisky has since struck up a friendship with Walker and the book has become a quasi Bible to several players and coaches in the locker room according to Jack Malooley of Crain's Chicago Business.

There is one element, however, that remains relatively hazy: the influence of the team's unofficial leadership guru, Sam Walker, author of "The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World's Greatest Teams," the most commonly read text among Bears players and coaches next to the playbook. In what has become the squad’s team-building bible, the Wall Street Journal leadership columnist zeroes in on the common threads of the most dominant sports franchises. “The most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness,” he writes, “is the character of the player who leads it.”

One of the biggest messages that came through for Trubisky and others is that being a superstar is not a requirement for being a great leader. There are plenty of occasions where the best players on a team aren't its leaders. That realization seems to have taken a lot of pressure off that Trubisky was putting on himself.

This would explain why he is playing much better lately.

Most people will assume that guys like Khalil Mack or Akiem Hicks are the leaders of the defense. While they do play such roles, they'd probably be the first to say that Danny Trevathan is a huge presence on that side of the ball. None have embraced that role more than him. The same goes for Trubisky on the other side. They know they don't have to make all the spectacular plays. They just have to get things to a point where everybody is making them. That's what great leaders do. It's hard to argue with the results. Chicago went 12-4 with all of their losses being by a combined 14 points. They are molten hot with the best defense in football. It may not be the primary reason, but it's clear that the book holds a prominent place in how the entire 2018 season took shape.