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Commanders kicker Zane Gonzalez may have been the hero for Washington on Sunday night after doink-ing in the game winning field goal against the Bucs and ending the team’s 19-year playoff winless streak, but even before that he became a source of positivity for millions of fans watching who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
That’s because Gonzalez’s pre-game-winning-kick ritual shed light on OCD in a big way on national television, and he didn’t shy away from it.
Social media took notice as well — and it was a teachable moment about the dangers of meme-ifying a situation before all the facts are known.
For viewers with OCD, the dynamic of what was happening in real time was painfully obvious when the cameras cut to Gonzalez before his fateful kick. To others, it might have been confusing or come across mistakenly as an athlete worried about their physical appearance.
Gonzalez’s OCD was clearly — and understandably — triggered before the biggest kick of his career. He was seen on camera repeatedly touching and adjusting his hair before putting his helmet on for the kick.
Most kickers would naturally get nervous in such a stressful setting, but living with OCD is something else entirely. It can make even the most ordinary of tasks far more difficult to accomplish, and certainly makes already-stressful activities even more so.
What was endearing was that Gonzalez made no efforts to hide his symptoms or shy away from them — a common tendency among OCD sufferers. Instead, he battled through them and though it might not have been pretty, still accomplished his goal. In doing so, Gonzalez may have doinked his way to the perfect metaphor for athletes living with OCD.
Throughout his career, Gonzalez has been a rare voice of honesty and openness amongst athletes living with OCD. It is not an easy disorder to discuss publicly, and he was brave enough to have done so back in 2017, when he was just a rookie.
Gonzalez told ESPN in an interview that year that his OCD makes him “a perfectionist and more detail oriented.” He added, “Off the field, it’s a pain in the butt.”
It was also suspected that Gonzalez’ draft stock fell as low as it did — he slipped to the 7th round in the 2017 draft, despite being the highest projected kicker on the board — because of his OCD diagnosis.
Clearly, Gonzalez has figured out how to manage the disorder enough to be a successful NFL kicker.
He elaborated in the ESPN piece that he tries to keep his pre-kick preparation simple during games. “I just get a couple of practice kicks, a couple of leg swings, and then I cross myself,” Gonzalez explained.
However, triggers are bound to occur still at times, as they did Sunday night during the game’s closing seconds. But in managing those symptoms, eventually putting that helmet on, and going out to kick the game-winning 37-yard field goal — Gonzalez proved a role model to people with...
