On her path to becoming the Chicago Bears’ team clinician, Carla Suber got the same message from everyone she encountered in the field.
“You get it.”
Her journey, which included stops at Temple University and the University of Illinois, landed her at Halas Hall in a job she never considered could be a reality years ago. Along the way, Suber kept getting reassurances that she was built for this.
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In May 2019, the NFL and the NFL Players’ Association agreed to mandate that each team retain a “Behavioral Health Team Clinician focused on supporting players’ emotional and mental health and well-being.” That requires a club to have someone in the building at least 8-12 hours per week, but Suber is one of six full-time clinicians employed by an NFL team.
“One of the things we realize is that even clinicians who have great clinical experiences, working at a club is not necessarily the best fit for all clinicians,” said Dr. Nyaka NiiLampti, the NFL’s vice president of wellness and clinical services. “It’s a unique culture, and there’s a unique skill set that’s required to be able to do it and to do it well. … There are a lot of things about Carla in terms of her background that make her a really good fit in that space.”
After two seasons in a consulting role, Suber was hired full time on June 1 in the middle of a pandemic, and on the same day, the Bears spent their allotted practice time holding a powerful discussion about race.
She also began her job 10 months before the Bears made one of the most important draft picks in franchise history.
To land Justin Fields, the Chicago Bears had to hide their cards.
An exclusive look into the process that turned a dream scenario into reality.
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Over the past year, Suber’s work has been vital for the organization, so much so that she got a shoutout from general manager Ryan Pace as he rattled off thank-you’s following the 2021 NFL Draft.
“Carla’s background as both an educator and clinician brings such a unique and important perspective to the organization and allows us to strengthen our critical support system, whether it’s during the draft evaluation process or in-season support for our players and staff,” Pace said in a statement. “This past year also taught us that mental health needs to be more of a priority for everyone, so we really value the integral role she plays not only in supporting players, but with the coaches, staff and their families as well.”
Suber grew up in a family of teachers, and one that loved football.
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“I am the firstborn and I think my dad wanted a boy, so I watched a lot of football with my dad and I fell in love with it,” she said. “We rooted for the Eagles big-time.”
Suber’s mother and several other relatives were teachers, so that was a natural path for her. While teaching middle school at Episcopal Academy outside Philadelphia, Suber started to consider a career in counseling after noticing she tended to get the most challenging kids put in her class. She asked the head of the school about it.
“Because you can handle them and they relate to you,” he told her. “They feel comfortable with you and they actually act the best in your class.”
She earned her second master’s degree in counseling psychology (she already had one in secondary education).
“In that program, the lights went on,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, this is me. This is what I like to do.’”
Suber’s first foray into working with a team came at Temple, where she was a learning specialist from 2002-06, a role that paired her experience as both a teacher and clinician.
She got to work with basketball coaches John Chaney and Dawn Staley, a dream for a Philly native.
Suber then spent the next 12-plus years at Illinois as the athletic department’s first learning specialist. She built the program, again blending her teaching and clinical skills while working with the student-athletes.
“When you’re a learning specialist, you work with those students who are academically underprepared or may have ADHD or a learning disability, so there is a clinical piece to it,” she said. “Sometimes with athletes, they don’t get diagnosed until later in life. There’s that whole kind of blow to the ego, that whole self-esteem piece that you have to help work them through.”
She started to get to know players at the high school level during recruitment, then would work with them at Illinois and even follow their careers into the NFL. One of those players reached out to Suber and told her she reminded him of his team clinician.
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“At the time, I thought, ‘It sounds really cool, but I was still enjoying the work that I was doing,'” Suber said. “He planted a seed and then he connected us via text message. I was able to talk to (the team clinician) and the more she found out about me, she said I was an ideal fit for this kind of role.”
Suber got in touch with Dwight Hollier, who was then the NFL’s vice president of wellness and clinical services.
“You get it,” he told her. “You get the academic piece. You get the challenges these guys are coming into college with.”
Suber then started connecting with people in the Bears’ organization. Her first work with the Bears was at the team’s rookie minicamp in May 2018. Then, after she took a job in the wellness center at Loyola University in August 2018, LaMar “Soup” Campbell, the Bears’ director of player engagement, “swooped me up” as a consultant, Suber said.
Campbell’s message to Suber: “You get it.”
LaMar “Soup” Campbell and Carla Suber chatting during a Bears practice. (Courtesy of the Bears)When rookies arrive at Halas Hall for rookie minicamp, they meet the “P.E. Squad,” the player engagement team of Campbell, Suber and player engagement coordinator Erika Marmolejo.
“We make it clear to them, we don’t do X’s and O’s,” Suber said. “We are here to help you develop as a whole person. We deal with everything outside of football and help them grow.”
They work with players on the transition from living in a college town to living alone in an apartment and being in the building with Pro Bowlers. Suber helps create workshops for the rookies on decision-making, stress management and time management. Campbell spent five seasons in the NFL playing for the Lions, so he’s able to offer the perspective of a former player.
The experiences Suber had with college athletes made her ideal for this type of role.
“There are a couple things about Carla that really make her a great fit for that organization,” NiiLampti said. “I think one, coming out of college counseling centers, there’s that developmental age range that you have to know how to work with. You have to do a lot of outreach, which means you have to be comfortable getting out, getting in front of people, doing presentations and being engaging in that way. She’s got a background as a learning specialist, so she did a lot of work with athletes one-on-one in that context. And then being able to work with a diverse population, really having a lot of experience in that multicultural space.”
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Suber didn’t discuss any specific players, but the Bears have a rookie in Justin Fields who is going to be under the microscope more than a vast majority of first-year players who have set foot in Halas Hall. How to manage that is part of the rookie workshops.
“We just talk to them about learning how to be comfortable saying, ‘no,’” Suber said. “You don’t have to go everywhere, you don’t have to do everything, you don’t have to post everything. But also, as part of that, they’re gonna have to learn how to deal with it, so we teach them how to find some level of comfort in that limelight. Because you can’t avoid the job that you do.
“This is what you do for a living, so you’re gonna get some shine and you’re gonna get some attention, and people are gonna say things or you’re gonna have experiences that may not always be the best, but how do you manage it? So we talk about setting boundaries, setting expectations, not only for other people but also for yourself.”
When the entire roster is in the building, Suber has individual sessions with players. She does a lot of psychological education about stress management and presents videos or hands out information about mental skills training.
“That kind of plants the seed,” she said, “and then guys will come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I saw your video. Can we talk about X, Y and Z?’”
Last week, Suber had a coach stop her in the cafeteria to let her know that he planned to watch one of her videos, and he was going to have some questions for her. That’s the part of her job that’s exciting — seeing her lessons taken to heart.
“That’s probably the biggest thing for me about this job that I love is seeing the progression,” she said. “Seeing them grow and evolve and be more comfortable with the parts of themselves that they weren’t comfortable with, and learning how to manage things in a different way and a healthier way.”
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The best compliment for Suber is when one of her techniques is put into practice, like when she overhears someone in the cafeteria use a phrase she taught, such as, “Let’s reframe it.”
“I’m thinking, ‘That was me!’” she said. “I appreciate that when I can hear it elsewhere, that they’re actually implementing and thinking about things we discussed and what we learned from each other.”
Clinicians are taught to be blank slates. It’s different, though, in athletics.
“You kind of have to have some self-disclosure in order to get that connection with them,” Suber said.
That was critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. Suber doesn’t have family in Chicago, or even in the Midwest. She let people know how difficult things were for her during what was probably the biggest mental health challenge the NFL has ever faced, let alone the physical risks that came with the illness.
“I shared with guys, ‘Yeah, I miss my mom. I haven’t seen her in two years, so I get it,’” Suber said. “That kind of broke down some of the walls. We were able to just support each other. It helped me coming in every day, being able to have somewhere to go and not just working from home. The pandemic, in a way, brought a lot of us closer together within the organization.”
Aeneas Williams (@aeneas35), @Bears clinician Carla Suber and @Bengals clinician Dr. Peter Ganshirt discuss the mental health challenges that Legends and @NFL players face.
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Suber talks to everyone in Halas Hall, not just players. When the players see that, it encourages them to talk to her as well.
“They did explicitly say, ‘They’re here to support you,’” Suber said of Pace and coach Matt Nagy. “But also, just watching how we engage with other people and how comfortable people are coming to talk to us made it easier for (players) to come talk to us.”
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Marmolejo had the idea of starting “Coffee with Carla,” in which Suber held monthly conversations with significant others of the players. She would talk to them about insurance benefits for mental health support and let them know about additional resources they had access to.
Also last summer, the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement sparked a reckoning about racism across the NFL, and several Bears players spoke out about their views. Suber is one of the few Black women in the Bears organization.
“It’s a mental health situation, but it’s really a life situation,” she said. “Real life seeps into football. … Money and status do not insulate or inoculate these guys from other people’s prejudices or biases, which is why the conversations we had were so important. I believe it helped people understand how what happens in the world directly impacts our guys.
“It was hard. A lot of really difficult but very productive conversations were had. I felt greatly supported by the organization as one of two, three Black women in the organization. I felt super supported. But we had to have those conversations because I think sometimes there is a disconnect where people think that it doesn’t impact athletes, but it actually really does.
“They may not maybe experience it as much now, but they experience something similar growing up. As Black people in America, we all have experienced something. Maybe not as drastic as George Floyd, but we’ve experienced something, so being able to talk about it and educate and have people who may not be Black understand and have a different level of understanding, it was definitely a productive conversation. As taxing as it was for me emotionally, it was a good experience the conversations that we had.”
NiiLampti had regular discussions with NFL team clinicians last year, as well as calls with only the full-time clinicians. Her goal was to convey there is no one-size-fits-all model, and she appreciated how Suber navigated it through her role at Halas Hall.
“I think Carla did a really good job of figuring out, ‘How do I support the players and the staff without being intrusive?'” NiiLampti said. “Sometimes there’s a tendency, especially (among) mental health professionals, anyone that has an expert status to say, ‘Hey, here’s how things should be done, and let’s push things so they can be done that way.’
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“What I’ve seen is the most respected team clinicians get a sense for what the culture is and can strike that balance between gently pushing the organization in the direction that it needs to go but at the same time not seeming overly aggressive, and at the same time making sure that the individuals that you are there to serve are feeling supported. I think she was able to strike that balance very well, which I think is also a hard balance to strike.”
When a draft prospect logged in to a video call for a meeting with the Bears, he might go through interviews with a position coach or a member of the personnel department. Then he’d see Suber pop up.
“They see me, they’re like, ‘Oh, OK,’” Suber said. “I let them know who I am and that this is not gonna be a football conversation.”
That’s what Suber likes — she isn’t talking X’s and O’s. She’s not asking a wide receiver to break down his routes or a quarterback to explain coverages. This is where Pace leans into Suber’s background.
The Bears want Suber to find out how a player learns.
“I ask questions about school and what was school like and what is your learning style,” she said. “I ask them to walk me through, ‘How do you learn a new install? Walk me through your steps.’ They’re not as robotic for me.”
This portion of the player interview doesn’t get recorded. All she asks for is name, school, position and hometown. She gets to know the prospect, then might pass a sentence or two along to the scouting department.
For the newest Bears, it gives them someone else in Halas Hall who they know, and someone they can trust. Through her role in the pre-draft process talking with prospects, Suber has also learned how much work has already been done to remove the stigma of discussing mental health in the world of football.
“I can see there’s been some stigma reduction,” she said. “If guys hadn’t (been to a therapist), they at least know how to access the resources. Even five years ago, a lot of college athletes would not know how to access mental health resources on their campus. To have a guy tell me, ‘No, I haven’t been in therapy, but I know that we have sports psych over here, I can go to the counseling center over here,’ because the conversations are being had in college, and when we see trends happen in college, they’re going to progress to the NFL.”
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NiiLampti has observed how “the culture has caught up to the research” to help NFL teams further prioritize mental health.
“What we know is to perform at your optimal level, you really need to be intentional in focusing on all aspects of your wellness, and mental wellness is a part of that,” she said. “I think there is a recognition that if you want optimal performance, you’ve got to make sure you’re working with the mind and the body.”
That makes Suber’s job easier, as more and more NFL players and coaches are getting comfortable having conversations with someone in her role. When she started, Campbell told her, “OK, this is your baby. Do with it what you need to,” and she has been able to build the program for the franchise.
“I feel super supported and thankful that they understand the confidential nature of my job,” she said. “I’m able to do my job the way I best see fit to do it and I don’t get a whole lot of pushback or anything like that, which is pretty amazing.”
Carla Suber observes a Bears practice. (Courtesy of the Bears)Campbell said Suber is a “pioneer.”
“I am thankful for all the skilled, dedicated and compassionate work Carla has been able to bring to the Chicago Bears organization,” he said via email. “She has been instrumental in assisting and establishing a culture where our players are always thinking ahead and constantly working to optimize their physical and mental health, and she routinely goes above and beyond to ensure that our players have the very best care and an outstanding career.
“As a former player, I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to work with Carla, as she has helped deconstruct the taboo of mental health in the athletic space.”
As Suber approaches Halas Hall and sees the big Bears “C” on the outside of the building, she asks herself, “Is this really my job? Am I really coming here?”
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She’s entering her second full-time season and fourth overall with the Bears. It will have new challenges, and provide her new opportunities for breakthroughs with members of the organization.
“That’s the rewarding part, just the relationships that I’ve been able to build, because when I look at them, I don’t see football,” she said. “When I look at them, I just see the guy who just happens to have this really dope job. I think for me, that’s the part, like seeing guys that over the years grow and become this young man who is now thinking about getting married or they’re having a baby, all this ‘adulting’ stuff. That’s the part that I like.”
(Top photo of Carla Suber: Courtesy of the Chicago Bears)
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