Social media has afforded fans access to our favorite sports teams and players like never before. With this new found access, players have had to respond, some positively, some negatively. In this year’s draft, coaches and general managers looked into the Twitter use of potential players and outspoken comments were noted. Never before in the history of sports have fans had so much unfiltered connection to athletes.
With this in mind, over the next few weeks the writers at Sports Events Guide are going to be looking at the players who represent the hopes, dreams and financial futures of their team in our Faces of the Franchise series. In the lead-up to this, I am going to explore what makes a franchise player, what happens when the player moves on or retires, and what happens when things get ugly.
What Makes a Player the NFL Face of a Franchise
More often than not this revolves around one factor: winning. A face of the franchise has to be successful, or potentially successful, and has to give the fans hope and inspire them to attend games and buy merchandise. His jersey will be the one worn around stadiums, on the streets, in living rooms and around the world. He will be the player with the largest group of journalists around him on game day and will be sent abroad to promote the team.
Teams will want him to be a model citizen; to support charities, help youth groups and most importantly, stay out of trouble. This will start in the draft, where players are scrutinized like never before. Colin Kaepernick saw his draft stock fall because of his tattoos, and Johnny Manziel did himself no favors by being “Johnny Football.” This fear can be well founded; financially the teams can be heavily tied to these players for long periods of time. If they do not get the return both on and off the field that they expect, things can get ugly.
Throughout this list you may see a trend of quarterbacks being the face of a team, as this position’s importance has increased; they are the ones who get the big contracts and have the pressure of winning placed on their shoulders. Gone are many of the franchise running backs, and the faces of the franchise reflect this change. One thing is for certain, you are unlikely to see many kickers, punters or centers on this list.
What happens when he leaves or retires?
We as fans want to see our team succeed. We want to see our players win, make big plays and show us why we are so emotionally invested in them. But at the end of the day the NFL is a business. Players have careers, families to support and retirements to contemplate. For the teams, they have the salary cap and the franchise’s future to consider. This leads to neither party having complete loyalty in one another because players want and deserve big paydays and teams need to weigh up the big contract verses future performance.
The best result for both parties is that a full career is played with the respective team. An example of this is Ray Lewis, whose name will be forever linked with the Ravens and whose presence will be warmly welcomed by the fan base. Ideally teams want a successor to replace their stud player, someone who they can ease into the roll and when the day finally comes to replace the franchise’s face, things go smoothly and we as fans have come to the conclusion it is time to move on. Classy players, who chose to play on for another team, will post a “thank you” to the fans and potentially return to retire with the team.
What happens when things get ugly?
Things rarely go smoothly in the NFL. Just this week, we have had one of the biggest controversies of the last year come back in the worst possible way, in the form of domestic abuse and Ray Rice. This is the extreme end of a team’s divorce from a star/ franchise player, when it has gotten so bad that the team has instigated a jersey exchange policy. This has happened once before when Aaron Hernandez was arrested for multiple murders. These are hopefully the exception, not the rule.
More often than not a player will feel that his career is not over and go on to play for another team, sometimes winning with his new team. Brett Favre is an example of this and even though he’s been away from football for three years, his time at Minnesota (a divisional rival) has meant that Green Bay has been unable to arrange to have his number retired–due to fear of disgruntled fans. Eventually these players are forgiven and they are welcomed back for the stars they were.
With these factors in mind let us look at these stars.
First up, Al Preziosi has the Faces of the NFC East.
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