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Minutes before the Super Bowl, Seattle Seahawks kicker Jason Myers walked back to the locker room and found punter Michael Dickson.
“Dude,” Myers told his teammate, “I feel kind of nervous because I feel so calm right now.”
Myers, a 34-year-old veteran, had spent the week immersed in his usual routine. On Monday, he jotted down detailed notes on his thoughts and technical plan. On Wednesday and Thursday, he kicked with the team at practice. And at 7 p.m. Thursday, he called his sports psychologist, an appointment he has kept every week throughout his 11-year NFL career.
The final days before the game were filled with more familiar routines: air reps, visualization and a Sunday-morning regimen that was structured to the minute. Stretching, shower, big deep breaths.
By Sunday afternoon, as the Seahawks readied to face the New England Patriots, the routine had served its purpose — almost too well.
A sense of calm overcame Myers.
It alarmed him.
“Dude, I was literally just thinking that two minutes ago,” Dickson told him. “I didn’t want to say anything, so I’m glad you did.”
Four hours later, Myers had turned in one of the greatest kicking performances in Super Bowl history, finishing a perfect 5 for 5 on field-goal attempts. None were overly difficult — his longest attempt came from 41 yards — but his five field goals set a Super Bowl record, as did his cumulative distance of 180 yards.
Considering the stakes and the circumstances — the Seahawks’ offense struggled to finish drives — the result was one of the most clutch performances by a kicker in NFL history.
It was also a considerable testament to the power of routine.
Academic research has shown that preparatory routines — or structured behavioral and mental sequences — can regulate emotions before performance. At the same time, the use of pregame “rituals” can decrease the brain’s natural response to failure.
In 2021, a group of academics in Austria went a step further, publishing a meta-analysis of previous research that found that pre-performance rituals provided a “modest but reliable” performance benefit.
Nearly every athlete talks about the importance of consistency, of having a structured pregame plan to execute. Myers takes the idea to its extreme, even in punctuality.
“I’ll tell you he has been late less than five times in 11 years,” said Dr. Fayyadh Yusuf, a performance consultant and professor at the University of South Florida Health.
Yusuf works with elite performers in business, medicine and sports. He and Myers teamed up 11 years ago, after Myers spent a season in the Arena Football League. An undrafted free agent out of Marist in 2013, Myers was trying to make the NFL.
Most of their early years together focused on finding a shared language and common understanding, so they talked a lot about technique, the mechanics of kicking and the mental toll of the position. Yusuf learned that Myers was a terrific golfer. But unlike golf, where one can spend hours hitting balls at the driving range, an NFL kicker has to manage and limit reps to maximize leg strength.
Through their talks, Myers realized he was at his best when he felt calm.
“So how do we get there?” Yusuf said.
One of Myers’ early issues was tempo. Occasionally, the adrenaline sped up his rhythm on a kick, leading him to pull the ball. To slow his heart rate, they worked for more than a year to calibrate Myers’ breathing.
“Every week it was, ‘How’s the breathing? How would you grade it?’ ” Yusuf said. “‘First kick, how was the breathing? Second kick, how was the breathing?’ ”
They were “highly, highly intentional,” Yusuf said, until it became automatic.
Yusuf then worked with Myers to craft a process to keep him in that slow, relaxed headspace.
“We really scripted his routine,” Yusuf said. “Write it down. Tell me what you’re going to do in the morning. What time do you want to get up at the hotel? Get breakfast. Some of this is already scripted by the team. When you get to the stadium, what’s the first thing you want to do? He wants to walk the field, check out different areas.”
Myers would go to great lengths to emphasize the details, finding stadium photos to aid visualization or researching possible field conditions. Once, before the Seahawks played in Jacksonville, Fla., Myers told Yusuf he was concerned because the Jaguars had just played in their throwback uniforms.
Confused by the comment, Yusuf listened as Myers explained that it meant the Jaguars had used a different logo at midfield, which meant they would have to carve out a patch of grass and re-sod that portion. There was going to be a seam around the 40-yard line, and he planned to have Dickson, his holder, move the ball four or five inches to avoid the seam.
“Sure enough, they had a kick there, he made the adjustment and made the kick,” Yusuf said. “That’s scripting it out. That’s understanding what you can potentially be up against on game day.”
Myers also began scripting out his internal monologue — both on the field and off. He kept a notebook and focused on “assertive” and “simple” thoughts. He leaned on a few key words to think about as he executed each kick: wide plant, great contact, head down.
Yusuf had him write down why he was a great kicker and why he deserved to play in the NFL. “To remove any kinds of doubts he says: ‘I have a powerful leg. I trust my technique. I know my targets,’ ” Yusuf said.
All of it is part of the script Myers and Yusuf have spent more than a decade tweaking and maintaining.
In the hours before the Super Bowl, the routine included turning on the Golf Channel as he talked to his family. On the screen were the quiet sounds of a golf course and a group of athletes going through their own routines.
For Myers, it was the perfect distraction. His mind was calm.
All he had to do was follow the script.