Packer-turned-Bear Lucas Patrick brings culture-changing energy to Halas Hall

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The Bears quarterbacks were in the middle of the meeting during training camp when center Lucas Patrick interrupted it.

Now that he was in the room, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy asked Patrick to show off his belly button.

“Give us the belly button,” Getsy says. “Show us your belly button.”

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A little more banter, then Patrick’s shirt goes up.

“Do you want a doughnut?” Patrick says, squeezing his skin around his belly button.

With a close view, backup quarterback Nathan Peterman covered his face.

“We appreciate the interruption,” says a smiling Matt Eberflus, seated in the back of the room. “It was educational.”

What the heck is going on?

“I have no idea,” Peterman said of the camp interaction that was captured on the team’s “1920 Football Drive” series. “Him and Getsy, they go way back. It’s probably some inside joke.”

Peterman’s not wrong. The influence is “Big Earl,” a character played by Will Ferrell in the 2004 movie “Starsky & Hutch,” featuring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Big Earl is in prison, and he asks to see the belly button of Hutch (Wilson) while they’re there to question him.

“He doesn’t want to do it, right?” Getsy told The Athletic. “And then Owen Wilson shows his belly button. We love to talk about movies. We love to talk about movie quotes. We love saying movie quotes. We always just say one, but that’s where that came from: ‘Let me see your belly button.’”

If you’re going to change the culture of your team — which the Bears sought to do heading into this season — sometimes you need to see a big man’s belly button. Changing the character of your team requires some characters, and the Bears have Patrick.

In Green Bay, a Lucas Patrick Fine was created. He liked to hug his teammates too much.

Or too long.

The Packers apparently needed a time limit for his hugs.

“So if anybody hugged anybody for more than two seconds, then it became a fine because of him,” Getsy said. “So he made sure that he hugged everybody in our room and hugged everybody any time we got on the practice field, so everyone got fined.”

Can Patrick confirm the details?

“Sometimes some stories are just left for speculation, and I’ll leave that one for speculation,” Patrick told The Athletic with a wry smile.

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“No, I like to have fun with the guys. This job, it sure as hell beats doing anything else. And I love coming to work. So I’m going to give guys everything I have of my personality. Like, let’s have fun. We’re playing a kids’ game; we’re paid too much money. So let’s go out there and have a freaking blast.”

This is the Lucas Patrick the Bears wanted and the one they’re getting daily at Halas Hall, from loudly encouraging reporters to wait for and speak to teammate Cody Whitehair on the other side of the locker room to screaming and dancing in practice.

“He’s a big guy when you score to have celebrations,” Whitehair said.

Patrick’s connections to Getsy and his familiarity with the scheme undoubtedly helped spur the Bears’ interest in him in free agency. But the Bears wanted something more — an unwavering fervor for football that shows up every practice and that could potentially personify the culture Eberflus and general manager Ryan Poles wanted for their team, especially up front offensively.

“That’s exactly what it was,” Getsy said. “It was that. The culture that we’ve all sat in meetings and talked about, and we’re trying to build, this guy, he can be the spark for us. He can get it started and he can hold people accountable to it, and everyone can see him do it and follow.”

Getsy is in his third stint with Patrick. The first came when Patrick was an undrafted rookie out of Duke in 2016. Getsy was the Packers’ receivers coach under then-coach Mike McCarthy.

“Right away, he kind of grabbed all of us with the toughness, the mentality, the grittiness,” Getsy said. “Here’s an undersized dude that just literally finds a way. I can remember after his first two years, and we were like, ‘This dude has no business …’ but he just keeps kicking everybody’s butt. He just keeps fighting.”

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Getsy became Mississippi State’s offensive coordinator in 2018, but he also learned more about Patrick from Bulldogs offensive line coach Marcus Johnson, who previously coached Patrick at Duke. Getsy returned to the Packers in 2019 as coach Matt LaFleur’s quarterbacks coach. In 2020, Patrick became a full-time starter for the first time in his fifth season.

“When I went back, you could see that Lucas had really settled in on believing in what he did,” Getsy said. “He’s such a team-first guy. Like, there’s not many guys that are OK saying, you’re going to be the backup center, but then the first week the left guard and then the next week, you’re the right guard. And now you’re the center. He just takes it and goes.”

It’s an endearing trait.

Call it resilience.

It’s what Poles wants in his players.

“This is who he is,” Getsy said. “This is ingrained. This wasn’t somebody just trying to make it in the NFL. This is purely what Lucas Patrick is about. It’s about like trying to put someone’s face in the ground. He’s going to get punched in the face. He’s going to get knocked down 100 times and he’s getting up 100 times. That’s who Luke is, what I saw, and that’s who he always had been.”

After the Highland Park parade shooting on the Fourth of July, Patrick placed letters in his teammates’ lockers at Halas Hall.

“I felt compelled to say, ‘We must do something as a team,’” he said. “That’s our backyard. That is Halas Hall’s backyard. And there’s people in this building who know people who were affected. I just felt compelled to do something, anything we can from the organization.”

Chicago and the northern suburbs had become home for Patrick and his family. He and his wife, Annie, go to dinner in Highland Park.

“This community, Chicago and greater northern Chicago, where I’m living and training and all this, like absolutely changed my family’s life,” Patrick said. “I will be able to give my kids and my wife and way, way down the road significantly more of myself because of what this organization did for me in a monetary commitment to on-field production.”

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What Patrick said exactly in his letter will stay with the team.

“If you can do something, please help in any way,” he said.

But the Highland Park Victims Fund was the primary beneficiary. Patrick hadn’t played one game for the Bears at the time, but he was ready to get involved.

“He loves ball, and he cares about people,” said Whitehair, who has become close with Patrick. “He cares about every one of the guys in here and he cares about the community as well. He’s very involved in the community doing things. I know when he was up north, he did a lot of that, and he’s bringing it here.”

Those “up north” miss him in the locker room.

On Wednesday, quarterback Aaron Rodgers was asked where Patrick fits among former teammates who had come up through the Packers organization.

“Oh, he’s got to be right near the top, for sure,” Rodgers said. “Just the way that he battled, getting cut, and being on the border many, many times, being in trade conversations, being down on himself and up and down confidence-wise and then starting for us at multiple positions and playing a big role for us at times last year. Excellent teammate, great guy in the locker room, guy you love having on your team, total tough guy, and just an all-around good human being.”

When Patrick returned to practice in full last week after missing most of training camp with a broken right thumb, the energy on the field changed, especially among the offensive linemen.

In individual drills, Patrick jumped and threw his shoulder into his teammates. During the Bears’ 19-10 win against the 49ers, Patrick ran into the end zone swinging his arms like windmills to celebrate receiver Equanimeous St. Brown’s touchdown catch.

“Lucas always has energy,” offensive line coach Chris Morgan said recently. “We’re trying to do a good job of the room having energy. But Lucas always has that energy. Like he is always one speed, one way. That’s a testament to him. He just has a lot of juice. He loves playing football. Like he likes playing football, he likes working, he likes training, he likes grinding.”

Patrick made it this far because of it. Being in the Packers’ offensive line room — one that’s consistently churned out capable protection for Rodgers — for years also helped.

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“One of the best things I had in the previous room was like the traditions passed down from the generations,” Patrick said. “That’s an important thing when a room has its own identity, that it can be established and kind of carry on through different draft classes, different free-agent classes, different guys.”

Patrick wants that to happen at Halas Hall.

“We’re probably having too much fun,” Patrick said. “It’s a good thing HR doesn’t come around too much.”

The Bears drafted four offensive linemen this year. Teven Jenkins and Larry Borom also are in their second seasons. Patrick said rotating with Jenkins in Week 1 against the 49ers never was an issue.

As he said, he was a rotational player early once in his career. He gets it. Team first.

“Anytime you have somebody who is willing to help create a culture, willing to share and willing to do anything to improve the group as a whole, I think it’s just an unbelievable plus, and he does that,” Morgan said. “He does that every single day.”

Patrick’s favorite movie “serious” movie is “Cool Hand Luke.” But as far as comedies, his top two are “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “This is 40.”

There are plenty of quotes to grab from those two.

“It’s just a common thread of humor and entertainment,” Patrick said. “And we’ve got a lot of time together in football buildings. You find common humor, you find common things you enjoy, then you just start to rip jokes and you find the next thing. You watch that movie and start making references.”

Team bonding comes in different ways. It can feature something said by Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd or Leslie Mann.

“We start to see like people’s personalities,” Patrick said. “As coaches, you tend to like take this top-down approach, because in the NFL, we’re all in this together. And coach Flus, he’s really harping on that. But we’re all people and we’re trying to do one thing, and that’s win games. So the best that we can get to know each other, what you like, don’t like, off the field, you tend to come closer.”

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Connections with coaches and coordinators included.

If Getsy is willing to share stories about Patrick, what does Patrick have on Getsy?

“He’s a huge fan of pineapples and flamingos and like cracked garage doors,” Patrick said.

Come on, really?

“No, there’s a funny story about that but not him,” Patrick said. “It’s like an inside joke.”

But he does have some about the Bears’ new offensive coordinator.

“I mean he’s a f—— Pittsburgh guy, a Yinzer,” Patrick said. “He taught us all these things about no gutchies, wearing no gutchies. You’ll have to look that one up.”

It’s Pittsburgh slang for underwear, not belly buttons.

(Top photo: Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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