Hillenmeyer 'hated coming into work' because of Kreutz
Tribune report3:02 p.m. CST, November 6, 2013
Bullying in the NFL has come under scrutiny this week after the suspension of Miami Dolphins guard Richie Incognito for his abusive treatment of teammate Jonathan Martin, and former Chicago Bears linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer said the incident reminds him of his feelings toward the team's former center and locker-room leader Olin Kreutz.
“The first year I filled in for (Brian) Urlacher when he was on injured reserve for a large part of the year (2004), I hated coming into work because of Olin," Hillenmeyer told Matt Spiegel and Laurence Holmes of WSCR-AM 670 on Wednesday. "Because he was a jerk. He was riding me because I was the third-year guy, or second-year guy, trying to fill in for a superstar. So I can relate in a sense that, you’re going to have people in your workplace that you don’t necessarily like."
Asked how he dealt with it and whether he had a support system within the Bears, Hillenmeyer said, "Olin led in a certain way. I would go to the grave acknowledging that he thought that everything he was always doing was in the best interest of the team. I don’t want that to come across like I’m admonishing him or saying that he was a bad leader. Because he was a great leader, but at the same time, when you have a room full of alpha males who were all the best player on their high school teams and one of the best players on their college team, to get everyone to buy in and fall into line, you need people that take leadership roles in an aggressive way like that."
Dolphins coaches reportedly encouraged Incognito to pressure Martin into conforming with the code of the locker room, and Hillenmeyer said team management often will look the other way.
"If you’re (former Bears general manager) Jerry Angelo or you’re (former Bears coach) Lovie Smith, as much as you might not approve of some of the methods, you like the results," he said of Kreutz's behavior. "People were going to come to OTAs and they weren’t going to have loose lips with the media, they weren’t going to do a lot of things to damage the locker room – not because they didn’t want to, but because they were scared of Olin.
"You need guys like that in the locker room, and coaches tend to just let it happen unless there's something egregious going on that's right under their nose."