The American football culture has been impacted and divided over the past week like never before with political factions vying for the moral high ground. In the midst of this “culture war,” those in the trenches are the players and there’s no sign that the pressures of the kneeling-as-protest issue will let up anytime soon. We know combat fatigue takes toll on a soldier’s physical and mental states where both are needed to be razor sharp when engaging against some of most hostile environments — this is also true with football’s world class athletes.

A distracted solider may be killed, but an equally unfocused player risks injury, missed play opportunities and damaging emotional swings may be plaguing those players who participate in protests as well as those who chose not to. With an NFL player’s pre-game mental focus and heightened patriotic and political stress levels at all-time highs — one wonders what signs of trouble we’ve seen already and what can be done about avoiding performance debilitating mindsets among the NFL players going forward.

In athletics, the term “flow” describes a person who has attained a happy state of total concentration with the activity at hand. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi details this optimal state of mind — noted as intrinsic motivation — in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. We are sometimes treated to an athletic “flow” demonstration that rises to the description of “magic;” perhaps Julian Edelman’s Super Bowl LI catch which sparked the Patriots to an unlikely record comeback is a useful example.

However desirable in sports, flow has a natural enemy — it’s called mental distraction. Think of the Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner’s costly bobble of Met’s Mookie Wilson’s easy grounder that should have ended the game and given that World Series to the Sox. The error allowed the Mets to rally and score three runs to take game 6 in the bottom of the 11th. In considering the Red Sox went on to suffer a series-ending Game 7 loss, it’s worthy to note that symptoms of depression (possibly from Game 6) may have played a role in the final loss as researches say emotions may spread like the cold virus among close groups through what is called a “social contagion.”

I witnessed an example of flow, distraction and social contagion recently while at a football game in Oakland. Raider’s running back Marshawn Lynch, already having an outstanding “Beast Mode” day, suddenly broke into a kind of dream-state, all-out sideline dance in the 4th quarter. I’d personally never witnessed such a commitment by an athlete in my life and I knew it was a rare moment. I felt Lynch’s flow moment so clearly that I turned to my friend predicting “something is up… watch what happens next.” I believed that Lynch’s “intrinsic optimal experience” would spread to his defense and it would likely distract the opponents. And only 12 seconds after the “Beast Mode” dance stopped, the Raider’s defense surged and not only sacked quarterback Josh McCown, but caused and recovered a fumble. Talk about a social contagion! The next day’s Business Insider headline summarized this football flow/distraction/contagion moment perfectly: “Jets Players Complain About Marshawn Lynch’s ‘Demoralizing’ Sideline Dance During Blowout Loss.”

Watching Lynch’s positive hypnotic impact on his team lead me to this question, “What does taking a knee as a team do to one’s flow?” On this issue, I had some first-hand evidence. It was Friday, October 21, 2016 and my town’s J.E.B. Stuart High School team in Falls Church, Virginia was on an impressive three-game winning streak. The Raiders had just lined up for the national anthem which was followed by a ceremonial civil war canon salute. While the antique gun’s blast delivered a pleasing jar to the crowd, the real impact as nearly all of the students “took a knee” in protest.

The reasons they gave centered on the same claims made by some in the NFL, namely the unfounded belief that there is a “racial bias in police shootings” or that Michael Brown was killed in a defenseless “hands up, don’t shoot” scenario. But, as a father of a non-knee-taking Raider player, it was obvious to me that these kids didn’t actually believe what they were claiming; most simply went along with the “act” because it had been heavily promoted at the school by a handful of NAACP-connected teachers.

Protests aside, what became very clear very quickly was that the “flow” — like the demoralized Jets in Oakland — was suddenly lost as the team became distracted. This night, the visitors who all stood during the national anthem delivered our newly minted “social justice warriors” their most one-sided loss of the season 49-6. Then, the once-promising Raiders inexplicably lost their last two remaining games 41-21 and 44-19 to close out the season with a whimper.

With our post-protest season turned upside down, I wondered, “How did Colin Kaepernick, the man who started the “taking a knee” phenomena fare after he began his protest?” Kaepernick began his 49ers 2016 season by taking a knee and then promptly lost 14 of 16 games, finishing last in the NFL for passing. His team’s offense finished almost as bad at 31 out of 32 teams. But the team’s defense — less directly impacted by Kaepernick’s leadership, also finished dead last in 2016. But here we see the defensive squad fell 28 spots from a very respectful #4 ranking only a year before. These statistics suggest there may have been a “protest” social contagion that impacted even the “stand up” 49er players — those who didn’t buy into his negative narratives and weren’t on his offensive squad.

The distraction of cognitive dissonance

In 1957, social psychologist Leon Festinger’s provided what is known as the cognitive dissonance theory. It claims that humans have a drive to hold all of our attitudes, opinions or beliefs in congruence with our behaviors to avoid the tension of dissonance or disharmony between what we do and what we believe to be true or our opinion or attitude on a subject.

An example might be the tension our high school students (especially those of military families where the Pentagon is only six miles away) when they were pressured (by friends or politics in the NFL players case) to participate what is broadly believed to be an overtly disrespectful or unpatriotic act. In this scenario most of the athlete’s public behavior may not have aligned with long-held attitudes about the flag — thus causing cognitive unpleasant tension.

Moreover, Festinger asserts people will seek to eliminate this tension by aligning our beliefs to our behaviors (by discontinuing the behaviors) or will changing their attitudes to align with the new behavior. A new poll showcase this phenomena where 32 percent who disagreed in 2016 that “taking a knee” in protest of the flag was “inappropriate” — have now changed to claiming it’s “appropriate.” The demographics leading this swing were blacks, Democrats and women. However, 65 percent of veterans believe the protest method is still inappropriate.

Most importantly, brain scans demonstrate that cognitive dissonance impacts those parts of player’s brain related to performance, namely the insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The insula is believed to be involved in consciousness and play a role in functions linked to emotions, motor control and cognitive functioning among others. Meanwhile the impact on a player’s dorsolateral prefrontal cortex impact in motor planning — a set of processes related to an athlete’s preparation of movement. Clearly the two areas of the brain impacted directly by cognitive dissonance directly relate to a player’s ability to perform. That said, the J.E.B. Stuart High School Raiders and Kaepernick’s 49ers may have suffered some level of flow depleting dissonance that sent both teams reeling in 2016. So the question at hand then becomes, “With the shifts in “attitudes” on this type of protest since 2016 — will the NFL still see dissonance performance trends”

‘Beast Mode’ missing in D.C.

As a resident of the D.C. area, I’m quite interested in the Redskins and their performance. Thus, Sunday night’s NFL Game of the Week became my “dissonance distractive kneeling” vs. flow test case. I knew Lynch and his Raiders were a red-hot team and were favored by Vegas odds makers by three points.

However, to anyone who watched the game, it began with almost an entire team — the Raiders — taking a knee while almost all of the Redskins participated in a unifying “locked arm” presentation that included the team owner. This match up would provide competing variables — a unified NFL team vs. a protesting NFL team — to test my “knee” theory. The first indication that the Raiders were in trouble came right away — during the national anthem. When the cameras panned the Oakland player’s faces one could see their uncomfortable body language, their sideways glances and their grimaces — clearly they did not seem committed to what they had been asked (or pressured) to do.

Body language psychologists suggest when people are uncomfortable with their situational “truth,” or are caught in a lie, their eyes point to an escape or exit, a projection of “their desire to physically and psychologically escape the anxiety…” On the issue of “microexpressions” psychologists recommend that if someone is attempting hide a lie, they need to control or relax their facial muscles to specifically include what is called a “mini-grimace.”

Then there was the Raider’s performance to include my favorite athlete from only a week previous — Marshawn Lynch. Beast Mode, one of the most vocal leaders of the “kneelers” movement, looked as if his insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex had been injured during the protest. His usual ability to dodge pursuers was gone — he suddenly looked like an average running back in turning in a season low three yard per carry — a full 25 percent drop off from his average. Further, the social contagion theory suggests, the whole Raider team would suffer with the mental dystopia Lynch seemed to be suffering from. Here’s how one sports writer, Chris Ryan, described it — note the performance drop offs described:

“Under pressure all night, Carr was 19 of 31 for 118 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. Carr had thrown 112 consecutive passes before being picked off by Montae Nicholson on the second play of the game. Oakland’s rushing offense, which came in ranked fifth in the NFL, managed just 32 yards. The Raiders went 0 of 11 on third down as part of their anemic offensive effort. Their 47 first-half yards were their fewest since Week 14 against Denver in 2015, according to ESPN Stats & Info. Oakland’s only touchdown, a 21-yard pass from Carr to Jared Cook, came after the Redskins’ Jamison Crowder muffed the punt return and the Raiders recovered at the Washington 18.”

Meanwhile, the Redskins looked sharp on both offense and defense with Kirk Cousins logging season high completions, yards and touchdowns — explosive enough to earn the NFC’s Offensive Player of the Week honors. Talk about flow!

As we enter week 4, the NFL will certainly see more protests. Players will avoid the controversy, participate through coercion or peer pressure or will take part as part of an honest or heartfelt gesture to cause that player believes in.

But whichever approach is taken, the psychology based performance — both positive with flow or negative with dissonance — should be considered a very real aspect to contend with. Ignorance of these phenomena will hurt NFL players, owners and fans alike. A positive, honest and functional way forward needs to be considered as a well-considered strategy will impact everyone.

Additionally, as more “protest” data flows in, those who make Las Vegas odds will need to pay attention as outcomes — to the trained eye — may become more predictable using a “knee” variable. But whichever path a team takes, they would do well to consider these words forwarded by the father of “flow” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: “Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.”

— Andre Billeaudeaux

Andre Billeaudeaux is a retired military journalist and has published extensively on topics centered on social science, psychology, politics and history. He studied psychology under Dr. Phil Zimbardo of Stanford and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Native American Guardian’s Association.