Epistemic status -- anecdotal, lack of expertise, speculative, zero fact checking.

At first I was happy about the Lions doing well given the stigma around that franchise (Only extant NFL franchise to never even reach the Super Bowl. They also had a 0-16 season.). But then I actually watched them play… My father noticed it first -- the Lions were very cocky. Then the commentators themselves said it -- apparently this is a deliberate strategy of Dan Campbell -- that over confidence is good!

But there are different types of over confidence. Being over confident in belief, communication & planning makes sense b/c keeping track of caveats is too mentally draining. But being over confident of your own greatness is different.

Looking at the Lions it was like every player had swagger like Travis Kelce (3x Super Bowl champion, 10x Pro Bowler, Taylor Swift's boyfriend)! So obviously this reminded me of PUAs from like 20 years ago. The Game was a very popular book back when I was in college, but I never heard of any convincing cases of benefit. So I was skeptical of such a team. I did not even expect them to win the division.

From this perspective the Lions became an interesting experiment to me. Probably out of illicit (???) desire for confirmation bias, I kind of wanted them to lose. But mostly I was interested in how their season would play out. So what can we learn from the autopsy of the Lions' 2024-2025 season?

It seems like ‘over confidence’ (by which I mean over confidence in their own greatness) gave them more motivation & a better record in the regular season than they otherwise would have had. But during the playoffs every team is motivated so this advantage was basically gone. And as the #1 seed the Lions were likely to play a team that had won a playoff road game the previous week so probably not an anxious team. They also lost a lot of players to injuries during the regular season leaving a depleted squad for the playoffs… a plausible consequence of ‘over confidence’ & increased motivation?

All things considered it seems like ‘over confidence’ does have some benefits to the extent that it actually increases motivation or reduces anxiety. Those are both very important factors (albeit not enough to defeat a motivated non axious team like the Washington Commanders) & maybe not worth the increased downside risk. I don't particularly like that conclusion; it's neither here nor there. But it does seem correct.

Hzn