By: David Gardy Ermann[1]
Super Bowl 58 featured the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a seventh-year pro and former first round draft selection, led the Chiefs to his fourth Super Bowl appearance. Brock Purdy, a second-year pro and former Mr. Irrelevant (last player selected in the draft), led the 49ers to his first Super Bowl appearance. Although on paper and from the game tape, the quarterbacks seem to have a number of differences in resumes and skillsets, they share at least one key trait: remaining calm in high-pressure situations.
On multiple occasions, Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young has compared Mahomes’s and Purdy’s abilities to remain calm in high-pressure situations.
For example, in January 2023, Young compared a rookie Purdy to Mahomes as he saw both quarterbacks as players who maintain a low heartbeat while playing, even when the rest of the players “on the field [are] freaking out because [of] the pressure and the adrenaline and everything else.” Again in September 2023, Young explained that “when the adrenaline goes up, most human beings start to sweat and lose themselves. Their minds get smaller.” For certain others, however, Young said they “calm down. [Their] minds expand as things get crazier.” He added that “[t]he greatest players in the world all have this genetic ability: as things get crazier, their body calms down. It’s the opposite of most human beings.” Young again identified Purdy as someone who remains calm in high-pressured situations.
Then in October 2023, months before the two quarterbacks led their teams to this year’s Super Bowl, Young again compared Mahomes and Purdy and their abilities to remain calm. Young said that the quarterback position “is really about guile and an innate gift from heaven, in some ways, to be able to have your heart rate go down when everyone else is in anxiety and pressure…. You just react differently – you respond. And then there’s 22 people on the field, including yourself, and it’s not overwhelming…. And that’s a very rare quality [ ] in quarterbacks … [and] in the NFL, very few are naturally at peace. And that’s when I compare [Purdy] to Patrick Mahomes, I’m comparing him to how Patrick feels at peace.”
Young describes this key trait for success as a quarterback—remaining calm in high-pressure situations—in various ways: not “freaking out because [of] the pressure”; having ones “mind[] expand as things get crazier; “be[ing] able to have your heart rate go down when everyone else is in anxiety and pressure”; and being “naturally at peace”.
No matter how it’s phrased, a person’s ability to remain calm in high-pressure situations can be a result of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy refers to “[p]eople’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances.” (Bandura, 1986, p. 391.) Specifically in athletics, self-efficacy is an “athlete’s belief in the ability to perform a successful operation to achieve a specific outcome in athletic performance.” (Çakiroğlu, 2021, p. 301.) Self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to perform successfully, is developed from four sources: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological and affective states, (Pfitzner-Eden, 2016.)
Once developed, self-efficacy results in changes to behavior and performance. High self-efficacy can result in “resilience to adversity and stress” and “feelings of calmness and serenity in approaching difficult tasks and activities”, (Lopez-Garrido, 2023; Flynn & Chow, 2017). On the other hand, low self-efficacy could result in a belief “that things are tougher than they really are, a belief that fosters stress . . . and a narrow vision of how best to solve a problem.” (Flynn & Chow, 2017.)
“KEY trait for success as a quarterback—remaining calm in high-pressure situations—in various ways”
Steve Young seems to have been spot on with his analysis of the key trait—remaining calm under pressure—held by successful quarterbacks. Although he may not have directly related it back to self-efficacy, he identified successful quarterbacking behaviors and tendencies that come as a result of high self-efficacy by way of his analysis of both Patrick Mahomes’ and Brock Purdy’s on-field performances. Young, an expert on quarterbacking, says that successful quarterbacks like Mahomes and Purdy do not freak out, that their minds expand and heart rates go down when faced with difficult situations, and that they are naturally at peace. Likewise, self-efficacy researchers have found that people with high self-efficacy are resilient to adversity, that they do not narrow their vision when solving problems, and that they maintain feelings of calmness and serenity when faced with difficult situations.
Taking the analysis of a Hall of Fame quarterback and the finding of self-efficacy researchers together, it becomes apparent that successful quarterbacks must remain calm under pressure. To do so, they can rely on developing high self-efficacy.
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REFERENCES
Bandura, Albert. Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory. (1986). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
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.
Flynn, Deborah M., and Peter Chow. “Self-efficacy, self-worth and stress” (2017). Education, Vol. 138, No. 1.
Lopez-Garrido, Gabriel. “Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory Of Motivation In Psychology” (2023). Simple Psychology, available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/self-efficacy.html.
Pfitzner-Eden, Franziska. “Why Do I Feel More Confident? Bandura’s Sources Predict Preservice Teachers’ Latent Changes in Teacher Self-Efficacy” (2016). Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 7.
[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.
