Sympathy for an opponent or bypassing a friend to get to the top can cause subtle retreats and settling for less. It’s easy to give in to the urge to let your neighbor/your brother go first. The loss of just the slightest bit of “victory hunger” – starving for a win – can be all it takes to allow a step back, especially for human beings. (We wonder if John’s brother, Jim, subtly let his older brother outcoach him?) This was one reason the great tennis champion Jimmy Connors would never let himself get close to other players. He knew he couldn’t allow himself to feel sorry for them.

Managing guilt and failure
San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick reveals another side to managing guilt – personal failure. Obviously his own worst critic, he blamed himself for the Super Bowl loss stating, “I made too many mistakes for us to win.” He was referring to his badly thrown second-quarter interception and to his three straight incompletions from the Raven five-yard line at the end of the game. He went on about his perceived errors, “They will stay with me the rest of my life” – which reveals just how harsh we can be over our imperfections. Many a person has failed to overcome their failures. As cornerbacks and relief pitchers in baseball know, “You better have a short memory.” Find a way to accept your failures and move on.

Then we had the missed holding call – by both the back judge and the side judge – on the last 49ers offensive play at the five-yard line, the third of Kaepernick’s incompletions. Replays clearly showed that cornerback Jimmy Smith had his outside arm around receiver Michael Crabtree – and had held his jersey. Former defensive back guru Brother Oliver – one of the greatest defensive coordinators in college football history – commented in a radio interview that it was unquestionably holding, that Smith had simply held the receiver “way too long.” (Perhaps not to appear too harsh Oliver went on to say that the play didn’t determine the outcome but in truth it did – it was the last 49ers pass into the end zone. Everything was riding on that play.)

Football analyst and former defensive back Herm Edwards, the former Jets coach, waived off the hold and said that you don’t get the call at that point in the game, and it was the Super Bowl. But sometimes a referee will step up and make that call – in a big game. Recall just such a final play in the 2002 national championship game between Miami and Ohio State when the referee called holding on a Miami defensive back in the end zone, an infraction which was no more blatant than Smith’s hold. Despite the referees’ usual insistence that they aren’t the ones who make the difference in the game, this referee did because he thought it was the right call, and Ohio State went on to score. Had he left the flag in his pocket, Miami wins.

Fear of criticism
Imagine if either of the two Super Bowl referees had made that holding call against Baltimore. He would have been flooded with criticism and faced a mountain of unjustified guilt, and found himself at the center of controversy. And the replay would have backed him up showing Smith holding Crabtree’s jersey – and the referee would eventually have been admired for his courage. Leaders sometimes have to stand up to make unpopular decisions.

I’m just saying that guilt entered the picture, and a referee passed on standing up. Edwards’ take means there’s an unwritten rule that – toward the end of a game – you can hold longer and you can even grab a jersey. So fear of guilt changes the rules. And as a result peer pressure takes the flag out of the hands of even the finest referees.

Taking your best shot
Then we have 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman who called for the pistol formation just once in the final four plays after the Ravens had difficulty all day stopping it. Did he not go with the strategy that got him there? Did he fail to take his best shot? Was he like the refs? One thing’s for sure, too often in crucial circumstances people miss taking their best shot.

If you want to know what motivates the human race you can fill in two of the first blanks with “secret guilt” and “fear of success,” and you wouldn’t be too far off too often.

The post Success lessons from 2013 Super Bowl appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

With all his bravado and fearlessness, his cool under pressure, when all was said and done quarterback Joe Flacco and the Baltimore Ravens caught a huge wave of success phobia displayed by their first playoff opponent, the Denver Broncos and rode it all the way to a win in Super Bowl XLVII. I believe it was the golfer Jack Nicklaus who used to say “More tournaments are lost than are won,” meaning that—in one form or another— a player will often simply give the victory away. Before the Ravens won it, the Broncos— the number-one seed in their conference— lost it. Heavy lies the head that potentially wears the victor’s crown.

Take nothing away from the Ravens and Flacco who took advantage of an opponent’s lapse, but as former all-pro safety Rodney Harrison said about their first playoff win against Denver, “If you’re Denver’s [safety] Rahim Moore, how do you let Jacoby Jones get behind you in that situation?” Specifically with 41 seconds to go and no timeouts with Flacco and the Ravens on their own 30-yard line trailing the Broncos 35-28, how do you get beat on a go route if you’re the last line of defense?  You get beat on an old school-yard play, “Everybody go deep.” Four fly patterns by the four Raven wide receivers straight down the field.

Flacco spots Moore’s risky behavior
Here’s how Moore did it with a combination of mental lapses which did him in. First he had deep responsibility on speedy wide-out Jones lined up wide right—providing support for cornerback Tony Carter.  When Flacco came to the line of scrimmage and surveyed the scene he saw exactly what he was hoping for— a sign of weakness in the Bronco defense, a sign of retreat if you will. Rahim Moore was leaning in too close to the line of scrimmage unlike the other two safeties in a three-deep defender set. With his two burners out the widest on each side, Flacco would have hoped for the weakness in the defense to be on one of those two guys, receivers who could really make you pay—take it all the way on one play.  Moore presented him with that chink in the Bronco armor.

But Moore didn’t stop with being a little out of position conceding some ground to Jones, he also stared into the backfield far too long after the play started instead of immediately back-pedaling into position. He wasn’t concentrating on his job.  After the snap, when Flacco scanned the field to see which receiver might be open, he wasn’t too surprised to see Jones with a step behind his man and to find that Moore was late coming over for support. That was Flacco’s shot and he took it—from his own 20-yard line.

But pressured by the pass rush of linebacker Von Miller who nearly hit his arm, Flacco had to float the ball on a higher trajectory than usual from his own 25. With the ball hanging in the air for 55 yards all the way to the Bronco 20, Moore comes to the rescue and for some strange reason slowed down. When he finally arrived he mistimed his leap prematurely and awkwardly as the ball dropped into the waiting arms of Jacoby Jones who then waltzed into the end zone.  Overtime, baby—but the Broncos were shortly done.

Even Raven backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor had spotted Moore’s egregious error from the sidelines: “The safety did a bad job tracking the ball. You could see he was out of position.”

A pot full of mental error— the fear of success in review
Let’s go back over Moore’s series of errors:  playing too shallow, slow getting into the play, slowing down as he approached his man, and finally mistiming his jump— leaping too early. His last move suggests that secretly he was anxious which interfered with his judgment, his concentration and lastly his physical speed. To say the play came down to a veritable pot full of mental errors would be an understatement. Even Flacco admitted that he had had “some luck” on his desperation heave. And that “luck” was Moore’s self-sabotage. Why did he choose this moment to self-destruct? Consider the stage was big, too big for him at that moment and he was exiting left.  

Harrison blamed Moore’s lapses on hubris, on Moore forgetting situational— read “team”— football and instead thinking how he could intercept the ball to claim the role of “final hero.” Harrison told Sports Illustrated, “Moore wanted to be the guy who made the interception and won the game. Everybody wants to be the hero.”

The overlooked but familiar idea of success retreat had claimed another victim. Overdoing can be its cover. Read: consciously I want to be a hero but deep down I want to lose—maybe punish myself for being selfish. The bottom line was that Moore’s behavior said, “I didn’t fear losing enough, I feared success if the truth be told.” He did a lot of things to assure he would not succeed.

Peyton Manning’s struggles with success
While Moore’s failure only sent the game into overtime, Peyton Manning had his own struggles with success which then showed up. It wasn’t long before Manning coughed up the game for the Broncos by throwing an interception—the worst pass he had thrown since his crucial interception near the end of Super Bowl XLIV three years ago, an errant toss that also assured his team’s loss back then.

Sometimes people can have their fill of success— or their family’s success— and unconsciously decide  that it’s simply someone else’s turn. Don’t underestimate the fact that Manning was coming back from a serious injury, a concern which can wreak havoc deep in the recesses of our mind when it comes to reaching the pinnacle of success.

And Junior Seau joins the crowd
Rodney Harrison observed how success sabotage— similar to Rashim Moore’s blunder— showed up in Super Bowl XLII. From his safety position with the Patriots at a crucial point late in the game he recognized the mismatch of 6’4” Giant receiver Plaxico Burress on a 5’9” corner Ellis Hobbs in solo coverage.  The defensive coordinator had called an all-out blitz and Harrison was screaming at middle linebacker Junior Seau to check out of the call. But as Harrison said, “Junior being Junior” just wanted to blitz— and Eli Manning just wanted to win. Manning threw an easy 17-yard fade for a touchdown to Burress in the end zone corner.  Seau suffered from the same overdoing hero impulse that apparently haunted Moore— and another player blind to true success bit the dust.

In one last look back, when we realize the phenomenal quick-read ability of a quarterback’s unconscious mind, we can see in the blink of an eye that on the play involving Moore— on which the playoff turned—Flacco would have read Moore’s risky out-of-position body language as a message, “Try me.”  Moore was signaling not only self-centeredness but carelessness and danger, and Flacco was more than willing to oblige him. Without that risk Jones would have never gotten behind him, and the Ravens would never have gotten to the Super Bowl.  You could call it “a game of inches”—a familiar baseball reference—but more often than we realize, the big games turn on the smallest choices.

There’s a lot more to handling the hot potato of success than we ever imagined.

The post How success retreat determined outcome of Super Bowl appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

Already we have seen how Chizik’s inconsistent behavior and lack of discipline underscored the ongoing saga of his final disastrous season in 2012.  To fully appreciate how specifically Chizik predicted his Auburn squad’s dismal performance due to his discipline failures we must return to a previously mentioned speech. Because he delivered this talk to a prominent quarterback club at the peak of his success in September of 2011 (see previous article “A coach retreats from success”), the importance of his statement cannot be overstressed.  At the time his team had barely won its first two games but still boasted the longest winning streak in the country.

He provides a rich story—as his unconscious super intelligence speaks—which we can only fully appreciate in retrospect.

‘Blue’ makes a mess
You won’t believe this story. In a memorable humorous anecdote he told his audience about his kids’ new puppy named Blue. Chizik described how the new dog was peeing and pooping everywhere and that he had announced to the family that he wasn’t going to clean up Blue’s mess.  Remember, these are his thoughts which originated from his own deeper mind quick-reading him in the blink of an eye.

Get the big picture—Chizik was not going to discipline some young family “member.” In other words, he could see deep down that he was not going to bother to discipline his team even when they had accidents and made tons of mistakes.

Indeed the team and its fans would soon be blue exactly like the color of their jerseys. As though to emphasize the point, Chizik unconsciously told a similar story in his book recently released at the time in which he described his kids bringing another family pet to a practice. This dog, too, ended up pooping on the football field.

Chizik was confessing that he would soil Auburn’s long tradition on its own field, that in a nutshell the next two seasons would be “one big accident” and he would unconsciously be dogging it. The story would truly be funny if it weren’t so sad.

You can readily see how the right-brain language of imagery creates the real power in a story versus the weaker literal version from the left brain. After it’s all over Chizik can say “I didn’t meet expectations” (left brain) or he can unconsciously paint the right-brain word picture in the story of the pet puppy, Blue.

How perfectly these two canine capers fit Chizik’s behavior over his last two seasons.  The former disciplinarian became progressively undisciplined himself and failed to discipline his players. Secretly Auburn had a new coach and didn’t know it. Indeed, the second Gene Chizik had appeared.

From that point in September 2011 following his story about Blue, Chizik’s record over the remaining two years would be 9 and 14. Increasingly fans and sportswriters and even his players could see his lack of discipline. Everyone could see it except for Chizik who had a huge blind spot around the messes he continually created.

Secret passions involving success
Again he unconsciously blames the culprit success  as the reason for his disregard for discipline and his eventual retreat  into failure. Remember in the same speech he told another story in which, he said it clearly, “success meant destruction.” If you succeeded, your opponent would try and drown you (see previous article “A coach retreats from success”). The unconscious mind, as Chizik demonstrated there, sees the full power behind the killer instinct which competition secretly engenders.

Simultaneously in this story Chizik implied that, in order to win, you had to drown the person trying to drown you. Indirectly Chizik pointed to his own killer instinct which competition mobilized—drown or be drowned.  To win, you must dominate others. It’s a fixed universal idea about intense competition in the deeper mind, what we call an “archetype” of the psyche.

The passionate deeper mind is what it is.

Success goes to his head—“Winning is all about me”
To continue to understand his last two seasons, especially 2012, we turn to another key idea in the back of Gene Chizik’s mind—a concept which explains his central problem. He could not handle success and had to get out of Dodge as secretly as possible without anyone recognizing why. He had to obscure the real story with classic denial. While his failure was painful, there was a much deeper, more painful story and two more truckloads of fear. But he actually shows us how to see past his frequent denials.

In the same quarterback club speech in September 2011 as Chizik reviewed Auburn’s success, he insisted that “it is not about me.” Often to hear unconscious secret confessions we read through denials and pay attention to the key idea particularly when something goes wrong. The message now: Auburn’s success “is all about me.” The natural self-centered way imperfect human beings unconsciously look at life and try to deny it at the same time. Of course we all comprehend how such thinking originates in childhood. We try to fight it but deep down the idea lives on. Chizik’s super-intelligence had thus informed him that indeed he had experienced great success as “all about me”—that success had gone to his head

Furthermore success had seduced him into the self-idealization that he was above such a human foible.

Chizik underscores how success swells our pride and distorts our mind. The question is not can success go to our heads, it’s how much and how to recognize it. Control it. We first must own it and constantly look for its hidden effects.  It’s painful to see our heroes like this—but look we must because nobody is above their own humanity.

Chizik’s story represents the human dilemma in which we all find ourselves and it well illustrates why success can be so difficult to handle.

Yes, we are surrounded by many people who succeed, and don’t forget that not so long ago Chizik himself had been one of those success stories. We are looking at a man who got to the top of the heap. His experience on the way up that hill reveals the secret struggles less-prominent folks have as we all try to get the best out of ourselves. Humility doesn’t come easily.

Constant reinforcement for the ‘big-head’
We wonder could Gene Chizik really deny such thoughts completely—in the vast unconscious mind where we are free to expand our thinking? Think of how often he was reminded that he was the one responsible for the success. He had just won the national championship—and had achieved the greatest comeback in Iron Bowl history. He was the National Coach of the Year.  As he recounted in his book All In, along with the governor and Nick Saban at Alabama he was one of the three most prominent people in the state. And, in an attempt to educate Cam Newton about the pressures of success, he included the two quarterbacks at both schools in his top five.

Constantly catered to, being paid millions of dollars, ever reminded of just how important he was—how could he possibly escape thinking, “You know, it really is all about me?” Yet his strong denial and self-idealization reveals that Chizek suffered serious secret guilt over his ego trip. He will remind of this enormous burden at the end of his self-sabotaging journey in 2012.

A major personal clue – His deep pain
Chizik revealed a personal reason for his vulnerability to a retreat from success in that same key speech in 2011. For the only time I know of, he publicly mentioned how he came from a broken family as did his wife. They both had been severely traumatized by divorce and pledged they would not put their kids through the pain they’d felt after their parents’ separation. Whatever it took, Chizik and his wife would make their marriage work. He was putting down a crucial personal marker of unfinished business. It was a brief glimpse into his life, and he quickly closed the window. Later we will explore what this had to do with his shifting roles from a leader to an absent leader. 

Now we return to the end of the 2012 season and pick up on Chizik’s comments and mindset as his career at Auburn came to a “blue blue” end.
(To be continued.)

The post The 2012 season disaster Part 4: The accidental season, the accidental team appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

I am utilizing a cutting-edge method for understanding the mind, a method developed from my experience as a psychiatrist and forensic profiler. Again we have discovered how the unconscious mind really works—how it quick-reads ourselves and situations in the blink of an eye, and then tells us about it through stories and key images. I call this the “right-brain” language of the mind, symbolic language. Think “speaking figuratively” instead of literally which I refer to as “left-brain.”

Often someone will appear to be talking about others but is really talking (“right-brain”) about themselves. We are all familiar with this common human tendency. Freud called it projection. Jesus put it more poetically with his idea that the speck we see in our neighbor’s eye can be the log in our own—the pot calling the kettle black.

We have discovered that the quick-read unconscious mind really is a super intelligence. I refer you to Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller Blink which provides a sterling example of the deeper mind in action—although he missed the specific “right-brain” language, he grasped where intuition comes into play. My earlier book, The Deeper Intelligence, clarifies how the mind speaks and reveals its secrets.

So we listen when Chizik speaks for key stories and images. This takes us back to some fascinating comments and secret predictions he made between the lines at the time his decline was just beginning.  We saw that downward spiral start unwinding through the 2011 season before accelerating through the 2012 season. We will pick up next with one of the most striking messages in his entire confession.

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