"We're not done yet": The fight for Superbowl LV and GOAT status

Super Bowl LV is upon us; the match up sees arguably the greatest ever quarterback vs the man whom shall challenge his title. We all know the immense achievements of Tom Brady yet Patrick Mahomes is coming up….fast. The Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes are the defending Super Bowl champions, who have now reached the big dance in back-to-back years. For three years on the trot, they’ve been in the AFC Championship game. Mahomes himself won NFL MVP in his first season as a starter, took Super Bowl MVP honours the year after, and has the chance to win his second ring in as many years when he comes up against Brady in Tampa. However, if Brady leads the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl triumph, collects his seventh ring, regardless of how good Mahomes is for the rest of his career, many believe Brady shall be regarded as greatest of the game forever.

We all know the back story with Brady; 199th pick in 2000 draft yet has had an amazingly successful career so what attributes have set him apart of the pack? One notable one would be his drive and ability to get and stay in “the zone” come business end of the season. An example of this was highlighted after Buc’s recent Championship win. While teammates celebrated the 31-26 breakthrough win, Brady had his attention firmly switched on the fortnight to come. And when one teammate was in the tears in the locker room after the victory, the superstar quarterback lived up to his GOAT status:

“Somebody was crying... and I heard [Brady] just (say), ‘What the f*** you crying for? We not done yet,” Buccaneers linebacker Lavonte David said on the All Things Covered podcast.David did not want to reveal who exactly was on the receiving end of Brady’s reality check but admitted even he had got a bit emotional. “He’s right,” David said. “I had a little two tears, too. So I wiped my s---, too. ... I’m trippin’, man. We still got work to do.”

In these debates of GOAT status, the areas I like to dial into include what learning environments were offered or created for Brady to excel and have these expectations or sense of self belief? What complementary factors or details within athlete connection can coaches offer to create a perfect storm and have players such as Brady or Mahomes excel to the levels they do? We have seen it in other sports such as Michael Jordan with Phil Jackson in basketball, Leo Messi with Pep Guardiola in football or Dan Carter OR Ritchie McCaw with coaches such as Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen in rugby union so what can or do the coaching support network offer these highly driven, extremely successful players to continue to drive high standards and meet their performance expectations?

These questions highlight the challenge of successful coaching; acknowledging the social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them. Research by Mageau and Vallerand regards the “actions of coaches as (possibly) the most critical motivational influences within sport setting” and therefore, coaching should be recognised as an educational dynamic relationship, where the coach can satisfy player’s goals and development but both sides have an investment of will capital, where human initiative and intentionality are both dedicated to show commitment towards goals and relationships. Brady’s current head coach Bruce Arians said after winning their conference title “The belief he gave everybody in the organization that this could be done. It only took one man.” However, as research suggests, the coach relationship plays a massive part in personal and organisation success; offering an environment where players can express themselves, offer understanding and reasoning for technical and tactical feedback whilst being as if not more committed to the combined cause.

Coming back to Brady and his expectations of the environment, the foundations for self determined athlete motivations are simple; offer autonomy in practice design, ensure competency is self assessed and recognised and build an inclusive environment where athletes can collaboratively learn and develop in their areas of interest. However, how can the coach find the right mix or balance for athletes to be in control and committed to their development? The role of performance coach such as Bruce Arians for specialising or committed athletes such as Brady is highly important; coaches are “preparing athletes for consistent high-level competitive performance” (Côté, 2009) through effective tactics such as integration of professional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal knowledge and developing player’s specific competence, confidence, connection, and character needs on regular basis. This is supported from research which showed athletes who perceive coaches to be supportive of decisions, provided with clear feedback concerning goal pursuits and engage with them in genuine and empathetic manner report greater need fulfillment, more self-determined motives and more perceived effort in sport (J. Pope & Wilson, 2012).

Coaching success stems around the competence, confidence, connection and character developed of the athlete as a result of the coach-player relations yet coach adopted transformational leadership styles would result in positive intrinsic motivations and increased athlete effort; while Arians says it took one man, again research would suggest it took a leadership movement, most likely orchestrated by himself and Brady combined to go from 7-9 last season to be heading to the Super Bowl. Bass (1985) recognises this style of transformational leadership as the ability to inspire and motivate followers to exceed performance expectations by shaping follower’s beliefs and attitudes. This form of leadership can be developed by inspiration or motivation to team members, through creating a vision of common goals, idealising influence through modelling behaviours or values, individualising consideration, through allowing for other’s needs and feelings and intellectual stimulation through encouraging creativity.

Previous studies have also addressed peer transformational behaviours and leadership style is related to group cohesion and collective efficiency; this is created by idealised influence by leading by example, showing optimism regarding team collective goals and setting high standards displayed by Brady while acknowledging the needs of others and gaining cooperation through sacrifice (Bass & Avolio 1994). Ultimately, a coach’s ability to acknowledge and develop positive interpersonal connections, driven by interpersonal skills and united sense of purpose and achievement, can offer solid base for positive relationships and performance atmospheres. I believe for the Buccaneers example, bringing in Brady pushed those standards discussed while offered room for Arians’ and his staff to display connection and commitment to the group as a whole. I have always said I believe we as coaches should assist players to identify problems as opposed to solving them, offering ideas and assistance for how to think and act as opposed to offering solutions. This allows coaches to act as mentors, supporting players such as Brady to develop metacognitive skills where the athletes are aware of and take responsibility of appropriate practices and thinking strategies.

Like fellow NFL and Superbowl winning coach Pete Carroll has previously defined “(we’re just) helping people be great competitors, teach them how to persevere (and be resilient) and unleash their passions”. Sophia Jowett’s research into coach-athlete relationships looked at the interrelated emotions and behaviours captured through constructs of commitment, closeness and complimentary, tied in later studies with coordination (Jowett, 2004). In this sports research, commitment (or perseverance) within coach-athlete relationships is recognised as intention to maintain a loyal, long term relationship while showing closeness as mutual trust, respect and appreciation for roles played in partnership, something Arians has discussed and displayed during the 2020-21 season. His ability to have mutual relatedness, common ground in beliefs and actions while having stress-free interpersonal behaviours displays coordination and complimentary aspects for successful coach-athlete relationships and support athlete's goals and targets. Arians has discussed how he has juggled his health and family commitments plus taken a more back seat role and enjoying being a head coach with better coordination through his coaching team as well as his players. High quality coach-athlete relationships, which are optimised by mentioned harmonious passion, result in higher subjective well-being within players (Lafrenière, 2008), an area which is critical for the development of self-determined motivations and mastery mindset such as Jordan and co. The main aspects of influential and successful relationships revolve around ideals such as mutual trust, respect, support, cooperation, communication and understanding of each other and impact of each other within the relationship, areas Arians’ has focused and improved on since returning to NFL coaching. The real test for the possible GOAT of NFL, his current head coach and the development of their playing group shall come on SuperBowl Sunday…