By Morry Gash- Associated Press

By Morry Gash- Associated Press

Below you will find my response to OrgTheory.net ‘final exam‘ question on the theory behind why the Detroit Lions finished 0-16:

Probabilistically, if two teams are evenly matched the chance of that team winning a game is .5, and the chance of losing the first 8 is .5^8, or .004… If the chance of winning is slightly lower, let’s say .25 (a semi-regular occurance for a football team to go 4-12), then we are in the range of .10 for an 0-8 start. If the Lions are objectively even worse than this at a talent level (say they are a 2-14 team… chance of winning a game at .125), then the chance of this 0-8 start is at .34. In all three cases, the chance of losing all 16 games is still quite low (the highest being .12, all the way to <.00001).

Now it is all fun and games to assume stable probabilities, but it may not be a fair assumption if we consider the inertia of losing, and the way this plays out at the psychological level for the team’s players. For example, a team who wins the first two games (at .5^2… a relatively high probability) may start to think they are a better team than a 8-8 record would indicate. It is then the role of a coach to harness those psychological dynamics so that the team continues to play to a level above that of their ‘objective talent level’, and avoids various processes that undermine their ability (practicing less as they feel they don’t need it, playing scared to avoid losing and being found out as worse then that of their record, etc. etc.).

In the case of the Lions, I think two factors were at work. First off, their poor draft picks over the last few years severely undermined their talent as a team. Assuming that the WR pick is exceptionally crucial to performance, they used 3 of their top picks in the 2000-2008 drafts on wide receivers. Only one of their top picks was on a QB, and he turned out to be a flop with the team (Harrington). Poor personal decisions by management thus lowered the teams objective talent level, failing to evenly distribute talent across the team in apt levels (for example, making them objectively closer to a 4-12 team).

But even with these decisions, the chance of going 0-16 would still be relatively low. This is when the psychological dynamics came into play. First off, the team started off 4-0 in the preseason, which though it means little in terms of actual talent of the team (most teams barely play their starters), can still build psychological momentum for the team and make players feel that they are better than they are. While some teams use this momentum positively (in large part a function of the coach and other leaders), it is possible for a poorly coached team to become overconfident resulting in players devoting less effort towards the fundamental ability of the team, and thus being less ‘objectively talented’ as a unit.

Now, let’s assume that a team gets to the 0-8 mark, there is also inertia displayed psychologically in the team, a process that begins to inform the ‘motivated reasoning’ of the players (Kunda 1990).  A team that plays poorly then begins to look at ways which align with their belief that they are a losing team.  A missed field goal begins to ‘confirm’ their belief in the team’s poor ability.  An incomplete pass looms larger in the minds of a losing team than a winning team.

In addition to just ‘thinking they are going to lose,’ I would argue that this plays into the way in which individual players go through the motions of their specific learned actions. Looking at the last 8 games of the Lions, several of them were winnable games in which they had leads down the stretch.  It is these situations where the psychological dynamics become so important.  For example, research in sports psychology has suggested that golfers play better when thinking of more holistic motions like ‘flow’ rather than the specific mechanics of the swing (Gucciardi & Dimmock, 2008, for review, see here). It would be my hypothesis that poorly managed inertia of a team results in players (over)thinking through the basics of their sports as the logic turns to (for example) ,”all i have to do is make this pass…. see the receivers.. and we we can break out of this slump” Rather than a team that captivates on this momentum of winning to think holistically (with a certain type of confidence), a team like the Lions may have begun to think about their individual actions more mechanistically, and thus at a lower level down the stretch then even their low ability would indicate.

So, for the Lions, two things are at work. First poor draft choices begin to undermine the talent level making a 50-50 winning chance to something more like 25-75, or 12.5-87.5. While this may explain a poor record, there is still a low chance of this team going 0-16.  To understand their final record then, we cannot rely on stable probabilities, and must explain how a team’s ‘chance of winning’ adjusts over in time as a result of the psychological dynamics at work in the team’s playing.  In other words, if not managed properly (a process requiring explanation in itself), losing can build momentum for a team towards more losing, even if their ‘objective talent’ level does not change. Mechanistically, this shows itself in the players looking for things which confirm their assumptions about themselves (motivated reasoning), and playing with a focus on the technical aspects of play rather than the holistic parts, lowering their individual level of play.  I would argue that these latter factors make a team like the Lions more likely to fail down the stretch in games in which, for most teams, would result in a win (i.e. being ‘up’ late in the game).

What do you think?  Is this even a valid explanation?  Am I missing something important?  I know we have some Lions fans out there…