My football team lost again last night.
It was one of those competitive, “we were right there” losses that let you sleep, but also the kind that leaves you staring at the ceiling at 1 a.m., replaying the same red zone interception, the same missed tackle, the same rambunctious sideline. After a genuinely terrible start to the season, I told myself I would be patient. I would give it ten games before I started rewriting the narrative. Ten games felt like a respectable sample size—enough for a new system to settle, for young players to figure out the speed of the league, for the early-season noise to quiet down.
We are only at seven. And I am already antsy.
I went into this season convinced Drake Maye was about to look like the version of himself everyone saw flashes of last year—the version that made the deep ball look effortless, that moved through progressions with calm instead of panic, that turned broken plays into something resembling art. I told myself the early struggles were just the tax you pay for developing a young quarterback. The arm talent was still there. The athleticism was still there. The “it” factor people love to talk about was still there. All he needed was time, better protection, and a few more games to get comfortable. I was sure of it. And alas we beat the Buffalo Bills… a few games after that, I was certain that I was right.
Then last night happened, and the certainty cracked a little.
I do this thing where I compare my sports fandom to my own recovery. It sounds dramatic until you are sitting around with an arm that has decided to become an annoyance. A few days ago it was just sore. Now it is throbbing, swollen to two or three times its normal size, and refusing to bend the way I remember it bending. My own mother and my physical therapist said the right things about inflammation, rest, and timelines. The logical part of me understands that healing is not linear and that setbacks are part of the process. The other part of me—the part that still believes Drake Maye is one good game away from looking like a superstar again—looks at this arm and thinks the exact same delusional thought:
I’ll be back to my superstar self.
It is funny how the language is identical. With the team, I keep saying “they just need to put it together.” With the arm, I keep saying “it just needs a few more days.” (Along with the rest of my recovery). Both statements are technically possible. Both are also convenient ways of avoiding the harder possibility: that the version I keep picturing might not show up on the schedule I want. Maye might not turn into the franchise savior this season. My arm might not return to full strength as quickly as my brain has already decided it should. The swelling might stick around longer than the optimistic timeline I made up while icing it at night.
The comparison is imperfect, of course. A football team is a collection of dozens of people, a coaching staff, a front office, and a whole ecosystem of variables I cannot control. An arm is just an arm. But the emotional pattern feels the same. I get attached to a particular version of how things are supposed to go. When reality does not match the version, I do not immediately adjust the version. I adjust the timeline. Ten games becomes twelve. A few days of rest becomes a week. The story stays the same; only the estimated arrival time changes.
Last night’s loss made the parallel harder to ignore. I watched Maye miss a couple of throws that he made last season and felt the familiar drop in my stomach. Then I looked down at my arm, still puffy and angry, and felt something adjacent. Both situations are asking me to sit with uncertainty longer than I want to. Both are testing whether my optimism is rooted in evidence or just in the fact that I am not ready to accept a different outcome yet.
I am not ready to declare the season over at seven games. I am also not ready to declare that my arm is going to cooperate just because I need it to. What I am ready to admit is that the delulu itself is doing some of the work right now. The belief that Maye can still become the player I pictured is keeping me from fully checking out. The belief that this arm will eventually calm down and function again is keeping me from spiraling about every little twinge. Maybe that is not pure delusion. Maybe it is just the thin layer of hope you need when the evidence is still incomplete.
Or maybe it is delusion, and the only difference between productive hope and stubborn denial is whether the next few weeks actually start matching the story I have been telling myself.
Either way, the arm is still swollen. The team still lost. And I am still here, icing both of them and waiting to see which version of the story shows up first.
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