Matt Chatham: NFL OTAs First Step To Building Crucial Team Chemistry

If you began the 2014 season with a fantasy football roster consisting of Matt Forte, Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery and Martellus Bennett, you would have felt pretty good about your chances.

The real-life Chicago Bears boasted that assemblage of offensive talent, yet in actual games on football fields, the Bears only ranked 23rd in scoring offense. Now, we’ll give you a moment to make the requisite smart aleck remark about quarterback Jay Cutler, but the team with the most recognizable names is not always the team that wins the most games.

Chemistry and camaraderie are crucial, and the upcoming optional team activities is where such things begin to be formed, writes former NFL linebacker Matt Chatham on FootballbyFootball.com.

“Football is first and foremost a team sport,” Chatham writes. “Despite all the NFL roster peeping that goes on at this time of year, the final factor in determining what teams will be good (and what teams won’t) almost always comes down to which teams play together best — not which teams have the best collection of players.”