Trading personal glory for gritty down-and-distance dominance, the veteran tight end prioritizes team success over statistics to preserve the hard-nosed identity of this legendary franchise.
The Chicago Bears have a long history in the NFL.
Players like Walter Payton, Dick Butkus, Brian Urlacher, Gale Sayers and many others have come through the franchise's doors.
The franchise known as the Bears was first the Decatur Staleys in 1920. The team was then the Chicago Staleys for one year before becoming the Bears in 1922.
The Bears have won nine championships, with one of them being a Super Bowl in 1985.
You can tell when a player is on the Bears through the gritty, hard-nosed way that they go about the game of football.
Many of those aforementioned players played during a period when the Bears were known for making it a point to run the ball down your throat and win the game at the line of scrimmage.
To play that style of football, you need to have players understand the importance of playing as a team. Individual stats are great, but winning is even more important.
It can be hard to get players today to understand that sentiment, but not for one member of this year's team. The values of those legends are living on through this Bears team today.
Tight end Cole Kmet is about to begin his seventh season with the Bears since being drafted out of Notre Dame in 2020. He went to the podium after a training camp practice, and what he said perfectly fit what it means to play for the Bears.
With Colston Loveland getting plenty of targets as more of a receiving tight end, Kmet is primarily used as an extra blocker and really only gets attention in the red zone in the passing game.
He was asked about the balance of targets and run blocking. Kmet's focus is on winning football games, which is exactly the kind of answer you'd want from a player like him.
"Yeah, I mean I'd rather win, man," Kmet said. "It's miserable around here when you're not winning. So, look, I mean, I know like when I do get the ball, like it's great and all that stuff, but like they put a heavy value on the run game and pass pro, all that stuff. So, that stuff doesn't really concern me. You know, I feel like you do what they ask you to do here and you do it at a high level, you're not going to have much to worry about. So, that's kind of how I go about things."
Ben Johnson has definitely gone back to the old ways of Bears football. He makes establishing the running game a priority, with D'Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai leading the charge.
When you think of the Bears, you think about defense and the running game. Kmet isn't worried about personal stats, as long as the team is winning football games.
He's been with the franchise during some rough times. When he got to the Bears in 2020, the franchise went to the playoffs but lost in the Wild Card that season.
From 2021-24, the Bears didn't even come close to making the postseason. The best record the team had during that stretch was 7-10 in 2023 under former head coach Matt Eberflus.
Kmet has been with this franchise and has seen how brutal it is to grind and put in work through an entire season without making the playoffs. It's helped him realize that there are some things more important than filling up the stat sheet.
The kinds of things that Kmet does on the football field won't show up on the stat sheet, but he's a very important part of this team.
If anything, he's keeping the mentality of the Bears alive.
