That’s right, the Dallas Cowboys kicker had a very bad leg in the game against Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Despite making it to the Divisional Round, Brett Maher, 33, became the first NFL player to miss four extra points in playoff games, three of them were in the first half and one at the start of the second.
For context, it’s important to know that Maher scored 50 of 53 extra points during the regular season, so it was an outlier. Additionally, the kicker holds the Cowboys record with a 62-yard field goal.
Maher received the support of his fellow players as well as head coach Mike McCarthy and Jerry Jones, owner of the team. One positive factor was that on Tuesday morning, after the match, the kicker was the first to report to the practice field. He declared after the duel: “My teammates raised my spirits, now I have to do my part.”
The term ‘bad leg’ is used to say that someone is unlucky, however, when it comes to sports performance, we cannot accept this simple explanation.
There are days like this, when everything goes wrong for us, when we would prefer not to have left the house, because we do what we routinely do well. We have already explained in the column the term that psychologists use in these topics: psychophysiological congruence. The alignment of the mind, body and emotion. When it works, results are achieved, but when it doesn’t, clumsiness and errors add up.
When we realize that everything is going wrong for us, it is necessary to stop for a moment to carefully observe what may be happening with us. It is about exploring the reasons why our performance is low. We can observe if we are nervous or anxious, if we perceive ourselves out of focus, maybe something hurts us, maybe we have some concern, maybe some situation is distracting us.
Depending on what we identified, we would surely have some resource to resolve the situation if we have previously been trained on these issues. Without a doubt, taking a few deep breaths to scan ourselves and explore the situation is a good alternative.
We can also use self-talk to cheer ourselves up or get over ourselves. We can move our body to shake off the situation a bit, also use our eyes to refocus by directing our gaze to a fixed point. Sometimes a little chat with a teammate or coach could be helpful to rebuild confidence right then and there.
Once the competition in which we had a ‘bad leg’ is over, it is very important to reflect on what could have happened. Above all, to be prepared for another similar occasion and to be able to handle it in a better way.
Dear readers, faced with a ‘bad leg’ situation in which nothing is working out, let’s stop for a moment to take our center and identify what is happening to us. If we ignore what’s going on, we’ll fail time and time again, even perhaps, like Maher, we’ll achieve a sadly historic record.
“Reinvigorate yourself, go back to the essence of what makes you successful.”
