Most know me as Dr. John F Murray, clinical and sports performance psychologist in North Palm Beach, Florida, who helps clients to greater success and well-being in all sports, performance situations in business, and in daily life. That is my day job and I am passionate about helping my clients. 

I am also known as "The Football Shrink." Over the past 18 years I have developed something truly amazing. After working with NFL teams and many NFL players, and other football teams and players at all levels, I wanted to find a way to better understand football performance that included how well they had played mentally.

Studying every single play in Super Bowl history after developing a new way to rate total team performance including for mental factors, I found to my delight that my patented measure, The Mental Performance Index, could predict Super Bowl success better than any other statistic available. I wrote a book about this in 2011, and revised it in 2013, and it was endorsed by the likes of Don Shula, many NFL players, and Stevel Sabol of NFL films, Tom Flores wrote the forward, and Lesley Visser wrote the epilogue. 

About 6 years ago, I decided to turn this incredibly accurate measure of total team performance (The MPI or "Mental Performance Index") into a prediction monster. I spent 5 years studying almost 10,000 NFL games over 40 years of past games. I did my homework and I was able to create an algorithm that is truly accurate in beating the posted NFL spread. 

Why did I do this? It was never about beating Las Vegas or gambling, and I have never even done that.  It was about showing the sporting world that using a measure largely based on "mental" factors, which I know are so important to success (and this is my world!) could out-predict the best of them since I was gaining richer and more vital performance data with my metric!  The world had largely ignored the importance of the mental game, in my view!

In essence, I had gone in the back door to come out the front door. The argument is that since I believe I can now predict games as well or better than the best against the spread, my premise that mental skills and mental performance are vital was rock solid! In fact, this mental element is the biggest key to success. I already knew this, but as a serious professional and a scientist I had to prove it, and in doing this, you now have access to what could be the best free picks anywhere available.

Last year (the 2018/2019 NFL season) I began formally making NFL picks each week in the 17 NFL week season to add to the handful of picks I had already made publicly before past Super Bowl games. After this first season, and the Super Bowl picks, my record stands at 54-41-3 against the spread (57%).  This is phenomenal. Read below. 

You can find all my picks, the rationale, and many good articles at the dedicated website at:

https://www.FootballShrink.com

I am also making these picks simultaneously as an expert handicapper at a great website that posts these all public with total transparency, just like I do at my site. I am known as The Football Shrink there too, and the website is at:

https://www.sportswatchmonitor.com/handicapper/profile/the%20football%20shrink

Anyone who knows about picking against the spread in the NFL knows that 57% success is rock star status. Most serious handicappers cannot get better than 51% or 52% over time. Some are around 49%.

Even with this success, it is still early, so as we enter year 2 in the Fall of 2019 of making public picks before the games each week, we are simply adding to the database and inching closer toward dominance. I know this sounds confident, and hopefully not arrogant, after only picking 98 games, but I have studied almost 10,000 past games and built this algorithm properly, and know how effective it should be. I have done the homework, but I still have to prove it with at least several hundred games picked in advance! And that is what I am up to as we enter year two. 

ARE YOU SIGNED UP ON THE PICKS NEWSLETTER YET?

Most of you are already signed up to this newsletter and will get the picks each week. However, since this is before week 1, I am also sending this email to select friends, clients, colleagues and family in case you are not signed up and you would like to join this list. To do so, just email me a reply to add you in, or if you prefer, the following link has a newsletter sign-up form that reads "Subscribe to Newsletter" at:

https://footballshrink.com/picks/ (scroll down on this page and you will see the form on the bottom right side)

I will post the picks for week 1 in the next day or two. So be sure that you are signed up to get all the serious picks and fun as I continue on this mission to show how important mental performance is by becoming the best in the world at this task of beating the spread!