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As we look forward to Sunday’s Super Bowl Game, we might still think back on the shocking mistakes made during the playoffs, especially so, if your team was the one that made some of the critical errors.

Consider the last play of the NFC championship game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints where the Vikings’ Brett Favre, considered the most experienced quarterback in NFL, he’s played 19 seasons, made a terrible judgment¹ call. Here was the situation. He had an open field in front of him, and could have easily run the ball, putting the team into position to kick the game, winning field goal, and instead, he chose to make an extremely high-risk pass, across the field, which was inevitably² intercepted³. The game ended in a tie and the Saints went on to win in overtime⁴.

So how could a quarterback of Brett Favre’s experience and skill, who had a career season at the age of 40, have such poor judgment on the next-to-last play of the NFC championship game? Well, we probably never know the real reason unless Favre talks about what was going through his mind. But it could have been extreme pressure.

Sports psychologist Patrick Cohn works with high end athletes and dealing⁵ with such pressure and Cohn says there are essentially⁶ two groups of athletes.

Some athletes live for the big game. And they are gonna raise the level of their performance. And I don't worry about those athletes. They get excited, they get motivated, they love the attention, and they can focus their best.

And we call them?

Gamers.

And such gamers are typically the most…?

Talented type of athletes, but may be not the most hard-working. In other word, they need a little bit extra impetus⁷ to really raise a level of their game.

And then there is the other type of athletes.

They get a little bit more tense and worried about playing in that big game.

And this group tends to do better in..?

Practice than they do in the big game because they get anxious, they tire themselves out mentally prior to begin, they may doubt themselves, they may have, feel like a lot of expectations and pressure on them to perform well. So those athletes struggle with bringing their best game to competition and those are the athletes that I typically help.

Overall, the general personality profile is…?

The very hard-working and highly motivated athletes. Sometimes they have perfectionist tendencies, they really want to succeed badly and they are better practice players than they are when it comes to, you know, shine in a competition.

Interesting to note is that the top top athletes like…?

Roger Federer, for example, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, those are the athletes that have both packages. They are very highly motivated and longing⁸ to improve, but they also are gamers when it comes time big shine in the big game.

And Favre is probably one to add to this list, making his error probably into normally. But ultimately, how do you deal with the pressure? Well Cohn says this:

You don't go in and cram⁹ for the test when it's time for the big game. That's one of the errors that I see athletes making as feel panicked, and so I cram like I gotta work harder, I gotta study more films, I gotta study my opponents more and then they end up tiring themselves out, worrying too much about the game, just focusing too much on it.

And he says to be careful of a focus on expectations, because those turn into…?

Those ultimately turn into pressure or self-induced pressure. So instead of having expectations, I talk a lot about what can we do in place of that expectation. Expectations are typically driven by results and are focused on results. So I try to get them to think about what they need to do to execute in the present moment, and to focus on one player at a time, one shot at a time, which allow them to focus more on the execution than worry more about the result. You can’t tell an athlete. Hey, you just need to breathe and do some relaxation¹⁰ exercise before a competition. That’s not gonna cut it.

And Cohn says a lot of dealing with performance pressure lies with the coaches. So here is the Sean Payton and Jim Caldwell’s good mental council on the field this Sunday.