Before he became the Washington Commanders’ sixth kicker of the season, in mid-November, Zane Gonzalez hadn’t kicked in an NFL game since 2021. He weathered injuries and training-camp battles at one of the more volatile, confounding positions in football. So his mere appearance in Sunday night’s Wild Card game and his doinked-in game-winning field goal made him an appropriate hero for the Cardiac Commanders, who have now won five straight games on the final play from scrimmage.
As a euphoric London Fletcher put it on the Commanders radio call, Gonzalez “kick[ed] in the door and kick[ed] us into the second round of the playoffs” in the team’s 23-20 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After the game, Gonzalez said he’d been dealing with some hip discomfort during his previous kick, but that he felt good about the attempt as it left his foot. “I’m just a small part of a big plan,” he told reporters, adding that he was excited to get home to his wife and newborn son.
The stakes of the kick made it a compelling one, but so did Gonzalez’s pre-kick prep, which was captured by the Sunday Night Football cameras. As he walked to the field, he ran his hand through his hair several times before putting on his helmet. After the kick, Mike Tirico did some play-by-play of an earlier clip in which Gonzalez had adjusted his shoes and the seam of his kicking socks. “Whatever he lined up—in that head, in that foot—[punter and holder] Tress Way put it down and Gonzalez doinked them to Detroit,” Tirico said.
The few profiles of Gonzalez that do exist mention that he has obsessive-compulsive disorder. People who struggle with OCD might manage anxiety and obsessive thoughts through repetitive behaviors that bring temporary relief. “It affected me a lot more as a young kid. … It’s just little thoughts, little funny habits that I do,” he told the Charlotte Observer in 2021, when he played for the Carolina Panthers. As an example, he mentioned that he’d sometimes rinse his hands before kicks. “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.”
An ESPN story from Gonzalez’s rookie season with the Cleveland Browns suggested that his OCD might have caused him to slide in the draft. Although he’d just won the Lou Groza Award for college football’s best kicker and held the FBS record for career field goals made after his four seasons at Arizona State, Gonzalez was the second kicker drafted in 2017. He was picked two rounds after Jake Elliott, who will also keep kicking this postseason now that the Philadelphia Eagles have advanced to the divisional round.
Kicking would seem like an especially difficult profession for someone with OCD, which is draining enough without the usual stressors of the job. But Gonzalez has said it can manifest in useful ways for him. “It makes you a perfectionist and more detail oriented,” Gonzalez told ESPN then. “Off the field, it’s a pain in the butt.”
