Click Here to See the Archive of all 2012 MPI Reviewed Miami Dolphins and Miami Hurricanes Games
Canesport Publisher’s Note: “Mind Games” is a column written for CaneSport each week by John Murray, a noted sports psychologist and author who has developed an index for evaluating the mental performance of players and coaches in games. We think it will provide all of us with a unique viewpoint as the Hurricanes navigate through the season.
I’m excited to begin my second football season writing Mind Games in Canesport and covering the Hurricanes with all their storied history as they enter their second season under the amazing Al Golden. Good things are on the horizon and we’ll get into the Boston College game soon. Before we do, let’s reflect on how a sports psychologist adds to our understanding and performance in football.
If you followed this column last year, you know that I have no interest in status quo or other’s opinions about a game. I march to the beat of my clients’ unique needs as a South Florida born sports psychologist who rolls up his sleeves daily to help people succeed. In reviewing a football team’s performance, I lean heavily on the Mental Performance Index (MPI) combined with more traditional football statistics. Sometimes my interpretation meshes with popular opinion and sometimes not, but I only aim for the greatest precision and accuracy and that’s why I needed to invent the MPI in the first place.
The MPI was born because there were no statistics showing how well a team performed “mentally,” yet we all knew this part of any game is crucial. Since the day the first cave man tried to spear a large beast to feed his village, his “smart play” or “mental performance” was the critical and often decisive factor to his success. The same holds today in any sport. Tom Brady’s smarts are equally if not more influential than his body in playing quarterback. So when I rate and report on a football team using the MPI, I use a statistic that includes how the team performed mentally, too. Teams who play smarter and make fewer errors receive higher MPI scores. The MPI captures talent as well as mental performance, or stated another way the MPI is a measure of the “total performance” of a team. It is not a measure of outcome. We already know the final score, but the final score often fails miserably in showing which team performed better and to what degree. It is not a measure of performance by any standards. There are shallow victories that should have been losses, and there are frustrating losses that should have been wins, and knowing how each unit performed is the key to helping them get better the next week.
MPI team scores are reported on a 0 to 1 scale where .500 is roughly average. This shows how close a team came to perfection in a game. So a team with an MPI total score of .567 could be said to have performed at 56.7 % of perfection, and this performance will include how they executed both mentally and physically.
The graphic accompanying this story shows how talent and physical performance is far from sufficient to both know, and to train. This latter point is usually forgotten because there are so few legitimate sports psychologists still on the planet. Note that while the overachiever has much less raw talent, he often outperforms the underachiever due to his much greater “mental performance” and this “smart play” is where real strides are made game to game because it is a relatively fluid factor influenced by motivation and discipline – for example, see below graphic.
It’s how I help athletes get better in my professional work because I cannot really change their talent level, a more fixed commodity. We work together to achieve greater overall success by improving in areas such as confidence, focus, emotional control, goal setting, resilience, passion, discipline and imagery, and this training helps a player execute better on game day because we have usually rehearsed performance hundreds of times in our minds before game day.
This is similar to the work I have done an hour before each game the past two seasons with former Florida Panthers NHL star Olli Jokinen who recently signed a two-year, $9 million contract with the Winnipeg Jets. During our work so far together he has improved on all six main measures of performance points, goals, and assists over two seasons. His contract was also $3 million better than the previous one with Calgary, so he has actually improved financially too. The same holds for football players and teams, and I only mention Olli because he has been very verbal on his own in the media in discussing our work together, so he provides a rare example that I am usually unwilling to discuss due to confidentiality.
Now that you’ve been re-introduced to the idea of sports psychology and MPI ratings, let’s move on to the Boston College game. If you would like more materials on the MPI, you can get a copy of my 2011 book “The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History,” but please don’t be intimidated by the title. It is far from a dry book on statistics. There are lessons learned from each Super Bowl game that we can apply to daily life, tips on incorporating sports psychology into a football program, Lesley Visser’s chapter on the genius of 49ers coach Bill Walsh, and so much more including a power ranking of each team in Super Bowl history.
In last year’s final game, Miami was “outclassed, out-executed, and beaten to the ball” by a better performing Boston College team, losing 24-17 on the scoreboard and .533 to .484 on the MPI total score. This means that the Eagles really destroyed Miami and that the final score was kind to Miami last year. Last Saturday, in the second of almost unheard of back-to-back games, Miami evened the score with a convincing 41-32 win (.506 to .473 in favor of Miami). Revenge is sweet, and this was a terrific way to kick off the season! See the information below summarizing the statistics: Category Miami Boston College Total Performance (MPI-T) 0.506 0.473 Offense (MPI-O) 0.519 0.512 Defense (MPI-D) 0.441 0.439 Special Teams (MPI-ST) 0.685 0.434 Pressure Offense 0.571 0.45 Pressure Defense 0.467 0.338
Total Pressure 0.528 0.386
After last year’s loss to BC, I encouraged greater mental training and smarter play in the future, and it appears that coach Al Golden and company responded well. What you might be surprised to hear, however, is how the Canes did it this time around.
The game overall was played at a lower than average quality level. Miami dropped seven passes and had 10 penalties while Boston College had three turnovers. Overall team performance for Miami (.506) was slightly above average whereas BC was below average (.473) in a game in which both offenses dominated their defensive counterparts. BC’s passing yards (441) and yards gained (537) were off the charts terrific and Miami needs to make drastic changes to avoid being passed out of the stadium against Kansas State.
UM quarterback Stephen Morris should be commended for playing a very smart game, and his statistics would have been much better without the drops. The fact that the team converted around 50 percent on third downs shows how much better this offense can be without the drops. Morris’ arm strength, decision making, and leadership are a big upgrade from last year.
Believe it or not, the UM special teams unit was the best of the six units on the field last Saturday (.685 to .484 advantage for UM) – this represents a performance around the 99th percentile for this Canes unit that is nothing short of awesome. Unfortunately special teams does not always get a lot of credit, but this contributes greatly to how games are won and lost.
BC put up ridiculous offensive numbers but its play in key pressure situations on offense was a below par .450. The “U” did much better in pressure circumstances, registering an impressive .571 in offensive pressure situations.
Miami will have to keep clicking and perform even better to beat a solid Kansas State team this Saturday. I think Stephen Morris and his troops are up to the challenge and a smile just came to me thinking about the potential of Duke Johnson with his outstanding day of two touchdown runs and 135 yards on seven carries. What concerns me, and I am sure all of you, is defense. Miami’s secondary made an average at best BC team look like a Peyton Manning run offense. Both the coverage and quarterback pressure needs to improve or it could be a long day.
I will admit, however, that I am more pleased than I expected to be after this game. Golden has a very young team believing it can do anything, and coming back from an early 14-point deficit you never really felt they were out of it. Denzel Perryman’s pick 6 was a work of pure art and perhaps the turning point of the game.
Good things are happening in Miami, and I cannot wait until Saturday again. Go Canes!
Dr. John F. Murray, described as “The Freud of Football” by the Washington Post, is a South Florida native and licensed clinical and sports psychologist in Palm Beach. He provides mental coaching and sports psychology services, counseling, speeches and seminars. He recently authored his second book, “The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History,” destroying stigmas about the mental game in sports and showing football teams how to perform better and win more games by enhancing team performance assessments and training. For further information call Dr. Murray at 561-596-9898, visit johnfmurray.com or email johnfmurray@mindspring.com.
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