Forget Hollywood’s rah-rah version of team chemistry. Real NFL locker rooms are governed by complex, volatile formulas. Just ask Ron Rivera.
AT THIS MOMENT, the only form of music inside the Panthers’ locker room emanates from under the towel draped over Greg Olsen’s head. The All-Pro tight end is howling something that sounds an awful lot like the Chainsmokers’ “Closer” on his way from the showers to his locker. It’s lunchtime on a recent hump day inside the Panthers’ workplace, that strange and sacred inner sanctum known as an NFL locker room. And as players trickle in from meetings, film study or the weight room, the space around Olsen bursts to life. Across the room, backup quarterback Derek Anderson fills his lip with dip and conducts an impromptu clinic for a lineman on the undercarriage etiquette of the QB-center exchange. Cam Newton, battered and bruised most of the season, is all smiles today; he’s luxuriating in a short plush gray robe and squeaky red shower flip-flops. Rotund fullback Mike Tolbert, having heard enough of Olsen’s a cappella performance, fires up some old-school hiphop on the coffee-table-size speaker that occupies half his locker.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 12,2016-Ausgabe von ESPN The Magazine.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 12,2016-Ausgabe von ESPN The Magazine.
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