One of the more surprising moments of the Bears offseason, was David Montgomery opting to sign with the Lions instead of returning to Chicago, then turning around and saying constant losing with the Bears “sucked the fun out of the game” for him.
On Wednesday, Khalil Herbert spoke candidly about his former stablemate’s comments.
“Losing sucks, not that I know that other guys experienced it, but losing sucks at the end of the day,” Herbert said. “I know nobody was too happy to lose last year. And that’s one thing I feel like we’re trying to change this year.”
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Herbert is already feeling those changes and said vibes are already different this year than they were last year.
“We’ve got a great group of guys. Everybody coming in with that mindset of getting better every day and having fun, you could see it out there on the field. You could feel it in the building.”
One of the ways the Bears are doing that is with “skull sessions,” or ways to get players from opposite sides of the locker room intertwined. Offensive players will talk with and get to know defensive players and vice versa.
“It makes a difference, I feel like,” Herbert said. “Especially on the field, in the locker room, you could just see how everybody gets along together — offense, defense, special teams, it doesn’t matter.”
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The hope is that building bonds like this will prevent a losing streak from “sucking the fun” out of the game, like it did for Montgomery. Of course winning more than losing will probably help the most in that regard.
Either way, it doesn’t sound like there will be any hard feelings from Herbert when the Bears play the Lions for the first time this year, and he gets to catch up with Montgomery.
“I was happy for him, just being able to get paid, get his money,” Herbert said. “Obviously as a brother I miss him. I’ll get to see him twice a year so that’ll be good.”