Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Clients,
The above chart and below summary represent the state of the art in football and team performance assessment, and this is just one benefit of the Mental Performance Index (or "MPI"). I develeoped the MPI over the past 9 years and featured the MPI in my latest book, "The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History" published by World Audience in 2011.
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Brief Analysis of Super Bowl XLVI
Derived from MPI data
This game was played at a higher than average overall level for a Super Bowl game. Overall, the Giants clearly outperformed the Patriots in terms of total team performance (MPI total score advantage of .522 to .500), so we know that the better performing team in fact won the game. Justice was realized! Over 90% of the time, the higher performing team will win a football game as reflected on the MPI total score.
Both offensive units dominated their defensive counterparts, and in fact while the two teams were nearly identical and superb on offense (.570 to .569 in favor of Patriots), the Patriots dominated the Giant's defense slightly more than the Giants dominated the Patriots defense, but emphasis on "slightly."
Both special teams units were exceptional, but the Giants won this battle .732 to .639.
The main advantage for the Giants came in pressure situations, as the Giants outperformed the Patriots in all pressure situations combined by a .569 to .461 margin. But whereas the Patriots offense in pressure situations was identical to the Giant's defense (both teams with a score of .536), it was when the Giants were on offense that the greatest difference occured. The Giants offense dominated the Patriots defense in pressure moments by a wide margin of .591 to .417!
In sum, a well played Super Bowl with remarkable offensive dominance, but Eli Manning and the entire Giants offense should be applauded for taking care of the New England defense when they had to in critical moments of this game. This is why the Giants won. They performed much better mentally in pressure moments on offense compared with the Brady led Patriots offense.
I will be adding these statistics to my annual update of the book which you can order with the links at the right of this newsletter.
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Canesport Column
Many of you are already familiar with the column "Mind Games" that I write each week during the University of Miami Hurricanes season, providing even more detailed MPI analyses of each game. If you have not seen this column, go to canesport.com and look in the archive. Each article comes with a similar graph showing team performance both on a bar graph and with the actual statistics, broken down by quarter as well. This column will continue in the 2012 Hurricanes season.
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About the Mental Performance Index & Book
If you have not yet read a copy of my 2011 book "The Mental Performance Index" and you are a coach, athlete, or anyone who loves sports and wants to know where the mental game fits in, you really want to read a copy. It greaty helps coaches to help teams win when properly applied, but more than that, it is a fascinating scientific discovery in sports that the mental game had been ignored for centuries but appears to be by far one of the most influential factors in winning. Go figure!
This book has been well-received and is endorsed by many including NFL Films' Steve Sabol, ex-Miami Dolphins players Jim "Crash" Jensen and Dan Johnson, one-time most accurate placekicker in NFL history Nick Lowery, NFL coach Doug Blevins, and football author Jim Martz. Pro Football Hall of Fame broadcaster Lesley Visser wrote the epilogue on Bill Walsh, while 4-time Super Bowl champion and ex-coach of the Oakland Raiders Tom Flores wrote the forward. |
Regards,
John F. Murray, PhD
www.JohnFMurray.com
John F Murray is a licensed clinical and sports psychologist and the most quoted psychologist in the general media over the past 10 years. He has been called "The Freud of Football" by the Washington Post, "one of the major psychologists in sports" by Fox Sports, and the "Roger Federer of sports psychologists" by Tennis Week Magazine. He works out of the Palm Beach office, by phone or will travel to your site.
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