A year ago, Josh Harris set out to reestablish a winning team in Washington. The first step was hiring Adam Peters to be general manager and then hiring Dan Quinn to be the head coach. The restult – along with drafting Jayden Daniels with the No. 2 overall pick in the NFL Draft – was a 12-win regular season and a win on Wild Card Weekend.
How did all of this happen? Well, the players changed from the four-win side in 2023 and the culture around the building in Ashbrun.
Vince Wilfork, a two-time Super Bowl champion with New England, knows a thing about the importance of culture. So what does it take for a team to build the right kind of culture to foster an environment of winning?
"First, it's accountability," Wilfork told Hoffman. "Being able to have a group of guys that's not afraid to tell each other what we need to do to accomplish this one goal. And you have to have everybody think on the same mindset of 'what are we here to accomplish?'"
Wilfork, who went to Miami and was a National Champion with the Hurricanes in the early 2000s, said that a lot of players come out of colleges where you are not used to winning. And there is a learning process when it comes to being someone who knows how to win and what it takes to be a winner.
"You have to teach them the traits of winning," he told Team 980. "And the more people that you can get around that can teach winning and have an attitude about winning, and the more leadership you have, I think the more successful you'll be.
"And last, but not least, it's the brotherhood. We all have to be able to play together as one. It's not nobody that's selfish and just worrying about themselves. Football is a team sport, so everybody always has to be on the same page and work toward the same goal. And if somebody screws up, we all screwed up. It's not just you, we're not gonna point fingers, but how can we minimize the mistakes and minimize bad football. And I think a lot of that is locker room driven."
For Wilfork, it starts with guys putting it together and putting the team first. Hoffman pointed out that a big word around Washington has been brotherhood. Which has been a tone Quinn set early on.
WIlfork pointed out to Bobby Wagner - who won a Super Bowl in Seattle when Quinn was the defensive coordinator there - as somebody who can instill all of this in the locker room and get younger players to buy-in.
On Washington, he added, "I love watching them play because you can just see the brotherhood, and the excitement and the culture and how much they play for one and other. And you can go a long ways being like that."
Catch the full conversation, including Wilfork's thoughts on rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels and what his presence brings to a defense when they had faith in the QB, on the audio player above.