The Death of a Team – What Happens When The Game Is Over | The Game Inside The Games, Ep. 5

Michael Gervais (0:20)

Welcome to New Orleans and The Game Inside The Games, presented by Microsoft Co-Pilot. I am Sport and Performance Psychologist, Dr. Michael Gervais.

Brandon Marshall (0:28)

I'm Brandon Marshall. Together, we're pulling back the curtain on the psychology of pivotal moments that can make or break a Super Bowl team.

Michael Gervais (0:35)

There's a moment, sometime after the confetti falls, when realization sets in. This is the last time this team will ever be together. It doesn't matter if you win or if you lose. It doesn't matter how close you are to your teammates or how long you've been on the roster. Every team, every year, dies after the Super Bowl. Some will leave for bigger contracts. Some will stay. Some will retire. Some will never play again. And no one really talks about it, but all players feel it. There's this thing right underneath the surface that we're coming to the end. So, Brandon, you've been in locker rooms the moment the season ends.

It happens every year. What is the season-ending moment like for you on a normal basis? Like, what is that like for you?

Brandon Marshall (1:28)

Yeah, I mean, there's only one winner at the end of the year, right? The one who's hoisted up the Lombardi. So for everyone else, I want to throw around a term, and I got to be careful here because of the stigma, but it's depressing. It's sad. You know, you have guys that are packing up their lockers in black trash bags, right? So you're throwing all of your stuff there, and that's the end of it, right?

So it doesn't feel good. And you also know that this is the last time that you're going to see some of your boys, right? That you were with for so many months. You saw these people more than you saw your family, right? Because you got to think about it. You're together six days a week, sometimes seven, and we're there from some of us, 6 a.m., 7 a.m. to 5, 6 p.m. So, it's one of the toughest times, one of the toughest times in our season is that end of the year, and I just picture the black trash bags. It's a thing in the NFL, right? People know like, yeah, you get cut or you got to clean out your locker, they just hand you a black trash bag.

Michael Gervais (2:37)

And so oftentimes, the reason I wanted to bring this up with you is because loss is part of sport.

And the same part of the brain that deals with grief loss, like actual loss of a loved one, is the same part of the brain actually that works with loss of a game. And then the ending is a loss of a team. And so it is a complicated process to go through. And when it came to the last game of the season, did you have this idea like, this could be our last time that we're together? Or was that below the surface, you didn't want to deal with it, that's a distraction to high performance? Because how did you manage, at one level, the knowing that it's coming to an end, and at the other, like the need to commit to giving yourself the best chance to be your very best?

Brandon Marshall (3:23)

It's interesting that you said it that way because it's so true.

It's painful. It does feel like a death. And it's another moment and opportunity for the majority of us to mask it, which we do. And that's why we end up in, you know, ruins or challenges postseason or postcareer because we don't deal with some of these things. There's a lot of trauma when it comes to moments like this. And we're not equipped or we don't lean into them. We actually run away from them, right? Because we're trained to be present, be here now, which is very powerful. But when that season ends, we're just on to the next. We're actually also trained to deal with the comings and goings of people, right? So it's almost like we are desensitized to loss. Next play, next man up. So we know that this team is going to change. There may be even changes in the coaching staff, support staff. But it's okay. We got to just focus on the next thing. And the next thing is the offseason.

Michael Gervais (4:41)

I remember the first time that the Seahawks, when we went to the Super Bowl, it was right underneath the surface and it was a decision. Do we embrace it or not? Do we bring forward that this will be the last time that we'll see each other? Or do we just pretend like it's going to happen for, you know, the next 100 years? So we chose to not bring it forward. And we did it in a demonstratively, but we brought it forward in a very subtle way, which is like cherish this, cherish each other.