By Last Sunday, Zane Gonzalez was a hero.
The 29-year-old doinked in the game-winning field goal as time expired to send his Washington Commanders past the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and into the divisional round of the 2024 NFL playoffs.
But after the game, some of the attention was diverted from Gonzalez’s late-game heroics after TV cameras showed his pre-kick preparations.
Gonzalez was shown repeatedly adjusting both his socks and shoes before finally getting them on. Then, as he walked onto the field at Raymond James Stadium, Gonzalez brushed his hair numerous times before putting his helmet on his head, taking it off and repeating the process before finally getting suited up.
Gonzalez was the subject of some ribbing on social media for his pre-kick routine. But what he does before every kick attempt is his own way of dealing with his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The former Arizona State star has been open about his journey with OCD and how it affects his life on a day-to-day basis.
“It makes you a perfectionist and more detail oriented,” Gonzalez told ESPN in 2017. “Off the field, it’s a pain in the butt.”
OCD is a mental health disorder experienced by people of all ages and populations, Matthew Antonelli – then-interim executive director of the Boston-based International OCD Foundation – told CNN in 2023. The chronic condition “occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions,” he added.
Those obsessions can be described as “unwanted intrusive thoughts, urges and images” and can cause intense feelings of stress, anxiety or disgust, Stephanie Woodrow, clinical director of the National Anxiety and OCD Treatment Center in Washington, DC, said.
Compulsions are the behaviors people will engage in mentally or physically to get relief from those distressing feelings, she added.
“These obsessions occur over and over again and feel outside of the person’s control,” Antonelli told CNN in an email. “People with OCD usually recognize that using compulsions is only a temporary solution, but without any other way to cope, they rely on compulsions as a brief escape.”
For Gonzalez, he told the Charlotte Observer in 2021 during his time with the Carolina Panthers that his own OCD affected him “a lot more as a young kid” and manifested itself in “little thoughts, little funny habits” that he does.
“I’ve done a lot of research on it,” Gonzalez explained. “Specifically, sometimes I rinse my hands before kicks … and I was kind of curious about that. But that’s one of the most common things that people with OCD do. It instantly makes you just feel relieved. I don’t know why, if it’s just a placebo effect. It’s not something I love having. But it just is what it is, and I’ve learned to deal with it.”
Gonzalez’s wife Lizzy hit back at people making fun of his OCD’s tics in the Commanders’ wild-card round victory over the Buccaneers on TikTok, posting a video of the moment with audio over it saying: “Scram, leave her alone, she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
While’s Gonzalez’s own pre-kick routine might be more pronounced than others, it is certainly not atypical in the NFL and sports more widely.
Many players across the NFL have their own pre-snap habits to make sure everything feels perfect for them to execute to their best ability. In golf, players go through a meticulous routine before hitting a shot. One of tennis’ most successful players, Rafael Nadal, became renowned for his pre-serve rituals of adjusting his shorts then his shirt then his hair and finally touching his nose before being ready to serve.
And former Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee explained why athletes, including himself, have their own routine they’ve got to go through.
“(Gonzalez) is not the only one though that has built up these things to do before a kick because you’ve got to remember like kicking is such a mental thing,” the two-time Pro Bowler said on his ESPN show on Monday.
“You’re trying to get yourself in the same exact mental frame and mindset every single time so you can execute something that is dependent on you being this accurate while you’re hitting a ball. So people develop a lot of these things. I used to lick my fingers before I punted because I didn’t want to drop the ball and I guess it was a nervous tic because, if I could feel that my fingertips were dry, my immediate thought was: ‘Oh f**k, I’m about to fumble this ball.’”
McAfee added: “I’m so thankful that that went in because somebody that has that in their mind, that perfection, that kind of miss can be bad.”
