Yips in the NFL: How Mental Aspects Affect NFL Players' On-Field Performance

Years ago, a New York Jets team doctor referred their All-Pro offensive lineman—inexplicably on the verge of getting cut—to Dr. David Grand. 

“In his blocking skills he had gone from being a tractor to being a turnstile. It was baffling to all concerned, especially the lineman himself,” said Grand, sports psychotherapist, speaking under the condition that the player and era he played in remain anonymous to maintain confidentiality.

After three extended sessions with Grand, the offensive lineman went on to have his best season. Grand never heard from him again.  

It was through brainspotting, a technique Grand founded in 2003, which Grand unveiled that the offensive lineman’s personal traumas away from the field were profoundly and subconsciously affecting his performance in the trenches. These traumas included a messy divorce that offseason, accusations of domestic abuse and an abusive relationship with his father as a child. 

“Following this, he developed back spasms and had trouble getting up off the couch,” Grand said. “So, when he played in preseason, he would freeze right after the snap.

“On a run play, he couldn't block. On a passing play, he couldn't protect the quarterback. It was the first case of the yips I had seen in an offensive lineman, but since, have discovered it’s quite common.”

Grand cites this as the worst case he has dealt with firsthand on the NFL level, though he has worked with other NFL players, stating that those cases are much more recent and extremely confidential.

According to Grand, athletes are traumatized on a regular basis, starting in their earliest experiences in sports. 

“These traumas collect up through their teens and adulthood,” Grand said. “The most common traumas are sports injuries followed by sports failures and humiliations. These traumas collect silently in the brain and nervous systems of athletes.”

Grand has experienced it himself. In his early 20s, as a wide receiver, he would go through streaky spells with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Passes that used to be sure catches would bounce off his hands.

Now, in hindsight, he can see that this was his first personal experience with what he calls “the yips.”

The yips can be defined as when a talented athlete inexplicably on the surface loses the ability to perform a simple task he once could. Yips were first identified in golf when a putt from four feet or less suddenly becomes harder than a 20-foot putt for a golfer. 

“Athletes are terrified and superstitious about the yips and basically refuse to talk about it,” Grand said. “They refer to it as the thing, the monster or simply ‘it.’”

In the NFL, the most susceptible positions to the yips and sports block or anxiety are kicker and quarterbacks. Symptoms have been seen at every position, though. The divide between an aberration or mistake and the yips due to sports trauma comes down to whether the symptom becomes chronic: fumbling by a running back, dropping sure catches as a wide receiver or blowing easy coverages. 

Grand makes it clear that no therapist can accurately diagnose a player without directly treating him. However, his firsthand experience with sports trauma in his own athletic career, 35 years practicing as a psychotherapist and 18 years specifically in sports psychotherapy allow him to identify sports trauma symptoms in NFL players by watching them play as a third party.

Prominent examples in the NFL include Tim Tebow, David Akers and Robert Griffin III with each example deriving from a different form of potential sports trauma.

Tebow, the case that Grand is most intrigued by, shows symptomatic yips in his unorthodox throwing motion that he can’t seem to correct, despite endless efforts to do so.

“Just like a putter, [Tebow] is better able to make the long throws than the short flare passes,” Grand said.

Grand sees Akers as a clear example, going from making 85 percent of his kicks for the 49ers in 2011 to getting released by San Francisco by the end of 2012, dropping to a 69 percent success rate—Akers’ lowest completion rate since the 1999 season with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Another prime example in the kicking game is Billy Cundiff after his infamous whiff in the 2011 AFC Championship Game, which the Baltimore Ravens lost to the New England Patriots. 

The yips could even be the culprit for Mark Sanchez's precipitous fall from back-to-back AFC Championship appeareances to butt fumbles and interceptions. 

Robert Griffin III and other NFL players such as Peyton Manning who have suffered repeated traumatic injury are much more speculative cases.

Yips are misinterpreted within, or completely excluded from, treatment in the sports world.

Information dating back to the 1890s links “hysterical paralysis”—or impaired coordination or balance— to trauma in a patient’s past. This information stemmed into a field of psychology that specifically studies treatments for trauma and dissociation.

For some unknown, this information is lost in transit when it comes to treating athletes, leading to improper or less effective treatment of athletes suffering from yips and sports trauma. Instead, athletes are treated with cognitive behavioral therapy.

Before seeing Grand, the Jets offensive lineman tried the usual treatments implemented in sports psychology, each to no avail, which Grand says is not an uncommon outcome. 

“It's like giving a massage to someone with a broken leg.”

All quotes were obtained directly by the author. You can follow Megan on Twitter at @meganKarmstrong.