I AM THE FORCE

"I'm going to tell you the facts, gentlemen, and the facts are these: At Green Bay, we have winners. We do not have losers. If you're a loser, mister, you're going to get your ass out of here and you're going to get your ass out of hear right now. Gentlemen, we are paid to win. Gentlemen, we will win."
Vince Lombardi

Something has clearly changed about being a Green Bay Packer over the years. When Mike Sherman talks about his 1-7 Green Bay Packers, he says they've done some good things, are dealing with devastating injuries, and really hope that they'll do better next time. As I watch Mike Sherman fumbling with his note cards on the sidelines, it makes me wonder, What would Vince Lombardi do?

Vince Lombardi taught us that being a winning organization was more about attitude and hard work than personnel. When he came to Green Bay, he turned a group of losers into a team that worked harder, prepared better, and expected to win every game. It wasn't that Green Bay had the greatest players in the league, but the Lombardi attitude turned them into the greatest team in the league. The players became champions because of what they're coach and then they themselves came to believe. They were winners, and they paid the price and had the attitude to make it happen.

Mike Sherman is not that kind of guy. He comes off like an accountant in his numbingly boring and uninsightful interviews. He seems to suffer over losing, but also seems to be prepared to live with it. His interactions with fans and the media are wooden and full of platitudes. I'm sure he probably gets mad sometimes, but I can't imagine the experience would be very inspiring. What does he expect from his players? Well, he says he was disappointed in this guy or that play, and moves on to the next week where the same thing happens over and over again.

Check out what Packer great Jerry Kramer had to say in a recent interview:

Q.Do you recall a Lombardi team that had 18 penalties, and if there was a Lombardi team that had 18 penalties, what would have happened?

A. (Long pause, followed by the wriest of smiles.) I had two holding penalties in my 11 years in Green Bay. Two flags for holding. I made maybe one or two errors a year. It was totally unacceptable (to commit penalties). Of course, we had a very basic system and we kept that system for a number of years so we didn't have a great deal of changes, and once you learned it, it was pretty much there. . . . But we just didn't make mistakes, and that was kind of one of the hallmarks of our organization. And when a kid (cornerback Ahmad Carroll) makes four or five errors in a row, we've got to take a hard look at the kid and his mental abilities.

And this is not just some rant about the good old days. Many would argue that you can't expect as much from today's players as could an old-school farmboy from Idaho like Jerry Kramer. I bet even Mike Sherman would say you couldn't expect that kind of excellence from today's ballplayers. And isn't that the problem really? Brett Favre is a winner and expects to win every time, but the team itself has no such character. From Ahmad Carroll to Scott Wells, they seem to play as if merely trying to survive. No swagger, no confidence and perhaps not the hard-working foundation it takes to win. Maybe the million dollar contracts are enough for them. Maybe winning is no longer what it's all about to be a Green Bay Packer.

They will eventually win some games, but the Super Bowl will never again become a reasonable possibility without a dramatic change in attitude. Mike Sherman is clearly not the guy to make that happen.

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all-the-time thing. You don't win once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing."
Vince Lombardi