This story is part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak's newsletter here.
The way Dallas Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer saw it, it wasn't a strategic issue that foiled his team's chances in a last-second loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
It was word choice.
The situation unfolded last Sunday in Rio de Janeiro. Trailing 31-28, the Cowboys faced third-and-goal from the 5-yard line with 14 seconds left, leaving time for a game-winning touchdown. Dak Prescott, the Cowboys' quarterback, had receiver George Pickens open on a quick out, but he rushed the decision and quickly threw the ball away.
The Cowboys settled for a tying field goal, and the Ravens kicked a game-winning field goal with one second left.
It left Schottenheimer explaining the cautious game management, which he said was partially the fault of his messaging to Prescott.
"I trust Dak Prescott completely," Schottenheimer told reporters. "So it was the word that I chose, which I'm not going to give away. The words that we say have meaning. And when I said the word, it put him into a mindset that he doesn't play with. He doesn't play that way."
In Dallas, the answer contributed to a week of scrutiny. But to mental performance coaches and sports psychologists, it also invited an intriguing discussion about the power of language, attentional cues and the ability of coaches to unwittingly influence a player's decisions or mindset.
Words -- and the manner in which they are delivered -- can alter our brain chemistry and affect our cognitive decision-making in surprisingly potent ways, both over time and in a game's most crucial moments. It is the essence of coaching. But science has revealed how easy it is to get it wrong.
"If I use the word no, it elicits a different kind of reaction in the brain than if I use the word yes, " said Andrew B. Newberg, a neuroscientist and professor at Thomas Jefferson University. "And, obviously, you can extrapolate that to all kinds of positive or negative words.
"Part of what happens, ultimately, is that if you engage somebody negatively, then that sets off a whole sort of cascade of effects in their brain and in their body. It puts them under stress."
For athletes who are conditioned by cue words or phrases, the effect might be even greater. One reason is because the wrong word or phrase can impair an athlete's attention or focus, pulling them out of their subconscious performance (or flow) state. Another is because of the classic neuroscientific idea that "neurons that fire together wire together."
When an athlete has a number of experiences associated with certain words or phrases, Newberg said, it can affect the wiring of an athlete's brain, influencing how he or she responds when hearing a certain phrase.
"By using certain words, you evoke those neural connections and you can ultimately evoke a positive thing or a negative thing," Newberg said.
Put another way: If a coach has repeatedly used the same words -- such as we got this -- to induce calm during stressful situations, those words will possess more potency when said again.
Professional coaches likely understand this relationship better than most. One longtime NFL quarterback coach believed his words had the power to "help make or kill a QB." By contrast, former NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said later in his career he often knew what a coach was going to say before he even said it, so the impact of the words was lessened.
In any case, it's often the unquantifiable nature that makes it difficult to know the exact impact of a coach's word choice.
Justin Anderson, a sports psychologist at Premier Sport Psychology in Minnesota, has worked with NFL quarterbacks, coaches and business leaders. He said he's often struck by a stark difference between professional sports and the corporate world.
"I go to Target Corp and they're training their midlevel managers in multimillion-dollar training sessions to get them to interact and develop their staff in the most effective and efficient way possible," Anderson said. "And you go to an NFL team -- and that's a billion-dollar industry -- and very few are doing anything to train their coaches on the impact of communication and how to teach."
To illustrate, Anderson often uses a study on attentional focus and soccer players. In the study, a group of players were asked to dribble a ball through a set of cones, up and down the field, as the researchers used a series of instructional cues for the players.
One cue told the players to go as fast as they could. Another told them to focus on where the ball was on their foot. A third said to stay as close to the cones as possible.
The third cue produced the fastest times, which the researchers said suggested a simple idea: When it came to verbal instructions, it was possible to be both too broad and too technically specific.
Instead, athletes often perform the best when coaches can conjure the words and direction that can provide a measure of focus and freedom at the same time.
"Where we lock our attention has a very significant impact on our emotions and behaviors," Anderson said.
There is a reason, Anderson said by way of example, that a caddie never tells a golfer: "Don't hit it in the water."
In this case, Schottenheimer never revealed the magic word in his communication with Prescott. Neither did the quarterback.
But one thing was clear: Schottenheimer thought it caused his quarterback to play cautiously.
He wished he had said something different.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
