Peyton Manning – NFL Personality Analysis Method

A New Tool for NFL Scouts – Mental Makeup/Personality Analysis

The NFL Personality Analysis Method is a new niche of scouting and player evaluation. More than most any other sport, football is a team-centric game. Moneyball analytics haven’t successfully translated from baseball to football because football is a team sport. Winning football requires all 11 guys to be in sync, doing their job, having each other’s back and executing the gameplan. In order for that to happen you need the right people with the right temperament makeup. During the many decades of NFL football clear patterns have emerged and shown us specific temperament that result in winning Super Bowls. Also it is clear that drafting physical traits without understanding the temperament personality is like flying blind. Because of this many teams have drafted busts in the first round. Drafting busts costs millions of dollars and wasted time. This can be minimized or even avoided and GMs can now strategically build winners. Everyone can evaluate a 40-time but the money is now on temperament evaluation. This is how championships are won. Our new tool to determines the temperament makeup to NFL teams an edge.

Two busts that the NFL PAM easily picked out was Cordarrelle Patterson and Johnny Manziel. Manziel COULD have a bright future IF he decides to start caring about his team instead of himself. Manziel’s personality weakness is indifference and Patterson’s is lawlessness (as in ‘rules are for other people, not me’). This is why Patterson runs a go route instead of the button hook as designed by the called play.

“The quarterback is the leader of the team” is incorrect. The coach is the leader of the team. The quarterback must execute the leader’s gameplan. The coach is the CEO and the QB is the COO. Our research shows that successful NFL QB temperaments can stay cool under pressure and can also execute a coach’s offensive system. They take commands and carry out the coach’s orders. They fail when they crack under pressure or decide to ignore the coach and do whatever they want. The larger ‘personality family (PF)’ that Peyton Manning belongs to never had a Super Bowl win until he won. Why? Because his temperament type is overly intense, not calm, and wants to be the CEO instead of the coach. His temperament type can make an excellent NFL coach. This type of QB is an ‘uncoachable subordinate’ and that won’t be tolerated by a strong coach (this is why Ryan Mallet got the boot). As winning covers almost all flaws, Peyton’s coaches have allowed for Peyton (the COO) to act as the CEO. This accommodates Peyton’s demand for control. Meanwhile Tom Brady is totally different and his temperament is a more natural fit for the NFL QB ‘COO’ position as he demands less control than Manning. Also Brady is able to stay emotionally much more cool than Peyton. This too makes him a better fit to deal with the stress of playing QB and to carry out the coach’s game plan. Obviously both are winners but it is these differences that win Super Bowls. (late Jan 2016 Super Bowl update: the Denver defense is carrying Manning and a strong defense allows for a game manager to win Super Bowls. Peyton’s negative intensity shows up as his playoff numbers are worse than regular season number. This shows he is pushing too hard.)

How does this impact winning games? Because football is a truly a team game and it’s a uniquely human game. Temperaments matter as the roles people play (coach, QB, WR, TE and so on) are depending on each other to be successful. The emotional, relational and psychological aspects of a player matters as much as physical ability and the team’s offensive system. Our ongoing research continues to reaffirm this finding. Additionally historical precedent gives us a new level of insight into how that player will processes these aspects of NFL football – relationships, stress, failure, submitting to the coaches authority and even how the live game itself is processed in real-time. The difference between busts, good and great players is the ability to mentally process the game in a specific way. While there are many examples that the PAM could have easily predicted, one example of failure is RG3. RG3’s mental makeup had no historical precedent of success and for good reason too as our RG3 article discusses.

A later article “A Tale of Two Mannings” uncovers why Peyton’s stats drop in the playoffs, while Eli’s go up. Hint: it is linked to how they perceive and process stress. Our research shows this was easily predictable and Eli belongs to a temperament family that is more statistically favorable at winning Super Bowls than his brother.

Stay tuned as we will briefly cover a list of college QBs before the 2016 draft.

Quick Hit: Brock Osweiler

To successfully play QB in the NFL one must have the right temperament tools and Brock Osweiler has the ability, let’s see how he uses it.

Brock Osweiler temperament is matched to Troy Aikman. This will be a brief analysis and on the surface it seems to be an good situation for the Broncos. Let’s take a look at Aikman’s numbers: only once threw for more than 20 TDs, never threw over 3500 yards in a season and has an almost 1:1 TD to INT ratio. After Jimmy Johnson left the Cowboys and Aikman began to fall apart. Therefore we can briefly conclude Brock is not a generational QB but could be a decent starter for a well-managed team.

Also the negative trait of Osweiler’s temperament trait is independence – if taken to an extreme turns into disobedience, selfishness and an inability to connect or fit in with teammates. Holding the clipboard for the past couple of years has been beneficial for his mental and emotional development. If the negative traits are minimized Osweiler could flourish and Manning can retire.

What’s ‘Wrong’ with Marcus Mariota?

Before the 2015 NFL draft certain scouts postulated that Mariota would be a bust. They pointed to his conservative play and his low INTs count. Some likened him to Alex Smith, that both are unwilling to throw the ball downfield. Another scout said ‘something’ bothered him about Mariota but he didn’t know what ‘it’ was. The last concern was that he ran a non-pro offense at Oregon and the lack of a pro-style offense experience would sink his NFL career. The Titans took him anyway. Is there something really wrong with the uber-talented Mariota? Let’s get inside his head** and see what the NFL Personality Analysis Method says about Marcus Mariota. Will he be a long-term NFL success or a flash in the pan?

In this picture who looks more relaxed?

Marcus Mariota is categorized by the NFL Personality Analysis Method as an 8RsT-Wa. The traits of this personality are:

Positive Traits: Versatile, Dedication, Resilience, Discipline, Humor, Perfectionism.

Negative Traits: Anxiety, Suspicion, Cockiness, Perfectionism.

Comparison with Past and Current NFL QBs

Marcus Mariota is somewhat of an enigma. Of the top 110 NFL QBs of all-time (by completed passes) there are zero with an exact correlation. Also there are no Super Bowl winning QBs or all-time top with a high mental makeup correlation.

NFL QBs with a minor temperament correlation are Bart Starr, Brett Farve, Jameis Winston, Ken Stabler, Philip Rivers, Johnny Unitas, Matt Schaub and Jason Campbell.

Due to zero players with an exact correlation, predicting Mariota’s exact career path is difficult. If this year was 2515 and Super Bowl 550 then our data would be more certain, but this is Super Bowl 50 and there have been only 31 SB winning QBs. In spite of the limited data set his temperament analysis is still very useful.

Basic NFL Personalty Analysis of Marcus Mariota

Marcus comes from a physically gifted personality group and the dexterity talents show. His mental approach to life is that he is creative, smart, intelligent, independent, earnest and has a dry sense of humor. Although he has all the physical tools a team could want, oddly there are no historical top QBs with a match. Why? Our research shows that his temperament approach to life includes lots of hidden internal anxiety. Underneath his calm exterior is an ocean of anxiety. It comes from his desire for perfection. When someone is overly perfectionist they become anxious about being perfect and have difficultly mentally moving on after a perceived failure. Moving forward is key trait to survive the grind of an NFL career and he will keep getting back up and going but the anxiety could really play a negative role during playoff football. Few close to him know how deeply embedded his anxiety is – but he does. His strong emotions require a substantial effort to keep them patted down and to keep himself calm. Emotional thoughts plague his mind. Perhaps this is why this temperament has never had success at QB previously? It is difficult for an NFL QB to play two games at the same time, one on the field and one in his mind.

His anxiety has already made a few appearances, as an overreaction. Some would mistake it as competitiveness, and it partially is, but everything inside his mind is linked to anxiety. Once early this season he was hit while going out of bounds. The hit was 100% legal, as he was still in bounds, but Marcus was quickly bent out of shape. He was angry and overreacted. He bounced up, yelled and threw the ball. Clearly he was mentally out of sorts and overreacted but he bounced back.

Regarding the the lack of interceptions, it’s his perfectionism. He hates imperfection and so he wants to do everything just right, perfectly. Anything not perfect roils him. In college, being so much more physically gifted than others made football easy. The NFL will test his mental toughness, specifically the ability to moderate his expectations of perfection.

Risk Assesment

How can such an anxious guy lead a team? Good question, we don’t know. Will the emotional cracks start to show during a tight playoff game and would that make the huddle uptight? Is Marcus Mariota the anti-Joe Montana? Imagine the worst case playoff football scenario, he tosses an INT to lose the game. Would he explode? Combust? Ignite on the field? How would he handle such a loss in the days and weeks following? Could he return the following year after such a loss and still play at a high level? We think so, because of his amazing ability to bounce back, but friends and family should hang on for a rocky ride during the off season.

What will his career look like? Will it go down as one of those talented QBs that never win a SB? One common trait among SB winning QBs is being clutch. The QB overcome by uptight/negative emotions will not be clutch and usually don’t win Super Bowls (unless they got lucky with an excellent defensive effort). To answer the question, will Mariota will a super bowl? No, according to our research, it is low odds. Winston was a better statistical chance of winning a Super Bowl ring.

As a side note, we found a more recent NFLer with an high mental makeup correlation – Kellen Winslow, the talented record setting TE. So according to historical precedent TE is Marcus’ best position. The 8RsT-Wa personality in the TE role doesn’t have the mental pressures of running the offense and being at the center of attention. The TE has simpler job, blocks, runs routes and catches the ball. TE responsibilities align perfectly with Mariota’s natural gifting. Marcus is stretching himself to add the mental responsibilities of playing QB.

So were those scouts right? Is there’s something wrong with Marcus Mariota? Yes, he is not an ideal fit to play QB. However his QB skills and athleticism will result in a decent career that does not win a SB. The scounts detected his anxiety but didn’t have all the pieces to the Mariota temperament puzzle as only the NFL PAM can give. They could tell from their own historical precedent something wasn’t quite right and his mental approach isn’t the norm for a top drafted NFL QB. Even look at the image at the top of this article and compare it to Jameis, who looks relaxed and who looks uptight?

Armed with the insight of the NFL PAM we would have proposed these additional predraft questions to Mariota in order to prove our analysis:

1 – What does perfection look like to you?

2 – How do you handle failure? When was the last time you failed? What happened afterwards?

3 – Is failure ok? Such as passing an INT or losing a game ok? Why or why not?

4 – How do you relax or recharge? Do you ever feel at peace? When? What type of environment allows you to let your guard down?

5 – Have you ever been so anxious that you unraveled? How do you deal with anxiety?

6 – To you, what are important leadership qualities? Do you have any of those?

7 – Do you view yourself as a leader? Why should people follow you?

On the one hand, his anxiety and drive to perfection is good and desirable. If he conquers his emotional anxiety and perfectionism there’s no reason that he couldn’t win a Super Bowl or two! However if he unravels or if he never establishes himself as a team leader, we now know why.

I will be watching his career with curiosity and wish him all the best.

**This publicly available analysis is the basic analysis. This analysis is reduced to protect the player’s personal life and the team. Personality strengths or weaknesses don’t mean that a person is good or bad, just human. Our sole focus is to determine the player’s temperament and mental approach and how it translates onto the field.