Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield Showcase the Importance of Self-Efficacy in NFC Divisional Round Match-up

By: David Gardy Ermann^[1]

Sunday afternoon’s NFC divisional round playoff match-up between the Detroit Lions and Tampa Bay Buccaneers will feature Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield as the starting quarterbacks.  Both players were once the first overall selection in the NFL Draft.  Goff in 2016 and Mayfield in 2018.  Although a playoff match-up featuring two former number one overall draft picks at quarterback would not seem out of place, neither Goff’s nor Mayfield’s careers have met the lofty expectations of that draft spot. 

As their careers progressed, both players experienced a multitude of ups and downs.  Nevertheless they are both back up now, both confident in their abilities, and both leading their respective team in a divisional round playoff game.

Jared Goff

Jared Goff, drafted by the Los Angeles Rams, had a rocky start to his career.  He served as the backup quarterback on the Rams for the first 9 games of the 2016 season, before starting the final 7 games; the Rams lost all 7 games that Goff started.  In 2017, after Sean McVay took over as head coach, however, it seemed that there became a marked turnaround for Goff.  He quarterbacked the Rams all the way to a Super Bowl berth in the 2018 season.  Years later, it seemed as though the 2017 and 2018 seasons could have been Goff’s NFL peak.  For example, when evaluating Goff before the 2019 season, Bleacher Report’s Brad Gagnon explained:

This is a tricky one.  On one hand, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Jared Goff is a two-time Pro Bowler with top-pick pedigree and a Super Bowl run on his resume.  On the other hand, the 25-year-old has seen his statistics decline rapidly ever since bombing in Super Bowl LIII, and it’s fair to wonder if his success in 2017 and 2018 had more to do with Sean McVay’s system and a loaded supporting cast than Goff’s abilities.

Towards the end of the 2020 regular season, headlines began to emerge like “LA Rams QB Jared Goff is now officially the problem” and after the season ended, so did Goff’s time in Los Angeles.  The Rams traded Goff along with two future first round draft picks and a third round draft pick in exchange for longtime Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford.  At the time of the trade, Goff was not even consistently viewed as an asset in the trade.  For example, in describing the benefits that the Lions received in the trade, Bleacher Report’s Maurice Moton wrote that the Lions got a “good haul” of draft picks in exchange for an aging quarterback, which the Lions then “could use that draft capital to fill voids across the roster or package them to move up for a quarterback” and referred to Goff as “a solid placeholder”.  Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times echoed those sentiments, explaining that, “[i]nitially there was a strong belief outside the franchise that Goff was merely a placeholder keeping the seat warm for the next great Lions hope”.

With the Detroit Lions, Goff has played far better than just a placeholder.  Goff led the NFL with the best touchdown to interception ratio in 2022 and he earned a spot in the 2023 Pro Bowl.  With a career resembling a roller coaster more than a typical career arc, the factor that is continually referenced as a difference-maker for Goff’s performance is confidence. 

Seth Wickersham of ESPN found that the root of Goff’s struggles in Los Angeles after the Super Bowl run, which ultimately led to the breakup between Rams coach Sean McVay and his quarterback, was that McVay’s coaching “backfired” and “destroy[ed] the quarterback’s confidence”.  Wide receiver Josh Reynolds, Goff’s teammate in both Los Angeles and Detroit, similarly felt that Goff’s confidence took a hit towards the end of the quarterback’s time with the Rams: “Hearing everything is your fault, it starts to mess with your confidence a little bit . . .  Whether you were the most confident guy in the world or not, you keep hearing something every day by your employers, it’s tough.”

And since joining the Lions and performing well, head coach Dan Campbell as well as Goff’s Lions teammates continued to emphasize Goff’s confidence as the reason for his improved performance.  Before the 2023 season, Campbell said Goff’s “confidence…has really grown…  He has a real good grasp of what we are doing, where the issues are, where the problems are, and that is something we really wanted him to get good at and he wanted to get good at, and he has worked at it, and he has improved.”   Goff’s teammate, Pro Bowl center Frank Ragnow similarly said during training camp before the 2023 season that “[i]f there’s anything noticeable on the field, it’s the confidence.”  Even Goff himself felt that his confidence is as “high as it’s ever been.”

Baker Mayfield

Baker Mayfield, drafted by the Cleveland Browns, had a strong start to his career, including breaking the NFL’s rookie quarterback touchdown-pass record.  After the Browns had gone 1-31 in the two seasons prior to Mayfield’s arrival, the rookie quarterback led the team to a 7-8-1 record in his first season.  In his third season, Mayfield led the Browns to an 11-5 regular season record and a playoff berth, the team’s first playoff berth since 2002.

However, like Jared Goff, Mayfield’s career has had its ups and downs.  The down years started in earnest in 2021, Mayfield’s fourth season in the NFL.  In that 2021 season, Mayfield went 6-8 in the 14 games that he played, throwing 13 interceptions and just 17 touchdowns, and suffering a torn labrum along the way.  After the season, Mayfield was traded to the Carolina Panthers.  The quarterback had a 1-5 record in the 6 games that he started for the Panthers and he lost his starting spot to P.J. Walker.  Eventually Mayfield was released by the Panthers and he signed with the Los Angeles Rams, who were playing without quarterback Matthew Stafford at the time due to injury.  Mayfield went 1-3 in the 4 games that he started for the Rams. 

After his short stints with the Panthers and Rams in 2022, Baker Mayfield signed a one-year, prove-it deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the 2023 season, in which Mayfield was not the guaranteed game 1 starting quarterback.  During the offseason, the Buccaneers had a preseason quarterback competition between Mayfield and Kyle Trask.  Mayfield won the competition and then as the Buccaneers quarterback this season, he seems to have turned his career around.  Some commentators even go so far as to note that “Baker Mayfield saved his career in Tampa Bay” after completing 64.3% of his pass attempts for 4,044 yards and 28 touchdowns.

Much like Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield has had a non-typical career trajectory.  And again, the factor that is referenced as the difference-maker for Mayfield’s performance is confidence.  While in the midst of his best season with the Browns, the 2020 season, Mayfield explained that “[p]laying with confidence is where I’m at my best . . . [t]rusting these calls, trusting my eyes and going through it and trusting my guys around me.”  Mayfield also recalled how he lost confidence in himself during the 2021 season, “when [the shoulder injury] started hindering my play and it started going downhill, that’s when I started losing my own self-confidence and losing myself.”  Before this season began, Mayfield explained that he was “comfortable” and “very confident”.  He continued to say that he wanted his “comfortability [to] resonate[] with everyone else” and that it was his job to “breathe that confidence throughout the whole team.”

Self-Efficacy

Both Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield have endured twisting and turning careers filled with highlights and lowlights, and for both players confidence has been attributed as a major factor for the highlights.

Although the term confidence is what is consistently used, “confidence is a colloquial term that is often used within the common parlance to describe self-efficacy.”  (Johnson, 2019, p.5.)  The two terms, confidence and self-efficacy are not actually synonymous.  “Confidence is a nondescript term that refers to strength of belief but does not necessarily specify what the certainty is about.”  (Bandura, 1997, p. 382.)  In other words, confidence is akin to “having a strong belief, whether in something positive or negative” whereas self-efficacy is about “having the strong, positive belief that you have the capacity and the skills to achieve your goals.”  (Harris.)

So, although confidence is attributed as the key factor to Goff’s and Mayfield’s career turnarounds, it’s actually self-efficacy at the root of the recent successes.  It makes sense too.  Their improved self-efficacy led to improved on-field play, as there is a positive relationship between self-efficacy and on-field performance.  (Çakiroğlu, 2021, p. 301.) 

Albert Bandura, a psychologist and Stanford professor who led the early development of self-efficacy research, explained that “People who regard themselves as highly efficacious act, think, and feel differently from those who perceive themselves as inefficacious.  They produce their own future, rather than simply foretell it.” 

Taking this a step further, those who are highly efficacious and thereby those who are producing their own future, “tend to exert greater effort, initiative, and persistence, select more challenging goals, and demonstrate a greater commitment to those goals.”  (D’Alessandro.)  Furthermore, highly efficacious people will be “more resourceful” and more likely to “play to win.”  (Loper, 2018.)  Therefore, “[b]y  increasing and mastering your self-efficacy, you allow yourself to succeed . . . by staying motivated, committed and optimistic.”  (Whitener, 2017.)

Self-efficacy is critical to success in all aspects of sports, playing quarterback included.  Using colloquial language (i.e., confidence), Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield have recognized the importance of improved self-efficacy on their respective NFL careers.

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REFERENCES

Bandura, A. (1997).  Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control.  New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Co.

Çakiroğlu,Temel.  “The Role of Athletic Self-efficacy and Athletic Perfectionism in Predicting Athletic Performance of Gazi University Student Athletes” (2021).  Macrothink Institute: Journal of Educational Issues, Vol. 7, No. 2.

Johnson, Lauren Noelle.  “Leader Efficacy Perceptions and Engagement in Self-Directed Professional Development” (2019). Ed.D. Dissertations. 121.

D’Alessandro, Jon.  Self-Efficacy: The Key to Performance.  High Potential Coaching. https://www.highpotential.coach/post/self-efficacy.

Harris, Narrelle.  Confidence versus Self-efficacy.  La Trobe University: Nest.  https://www.latrobe.edu.au/nest/confidence-versus-self-efficacy.

Loper, Chris. True Confidence is Self-Efficacy.  Becoming Better, 2018.  https://becomingbetter.org/true-confidence-is-self-efficacy/#Why_Self-Efficacy_Matters.

Whitener, Svetlana.  How Self-Efficacy Changes Your Self-Confidence.  Forbes.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/12/06/how-self-efficacy-changes-your-self-confidence/.

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^[1] David Gardy Ermann is a Counsel at FanDuel Group. The information contained in this article reflects the opinion(s) of the author and is not an official opinion of FanDuel Group.