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From a purely auditory measure, the chorus of boos had reached a volume impossible to ignore.
The Pittsburgh Steelers were hosting the New York Jets for Russell Wilson’s first start with the franchise, and a rowdy Sunday Night Football crowd did not like the pass that landed behind receiver Calvin Austin to start the second quarter.
Fans didn’t like the behind-the-line-of-scrimmage miss to Austin that followed, either, so Acrisure Stadium erupted in boos again.
But the quarterback whom they were allegedly welcoming didn’t flinch. What the nerves of his ears noticed, his mind refused to meaningfully consider.
No, this wasn’t the first rodeo for a 13-year starting quarterback who had reached nine Pro Bowls and two Super Bowls, including a championship win.
But also: The 5-foot-10 5/8 quarterback realized long ago that if he wanted to excel as an undersized professional football player, he’d make up for his physical shortcomings with a mental edge. He would strengthen his mind to an almost unbelievable tenor. Perhaps it wasn’t always realistic to embrace positivity. But it was routinely reasonable to minimize negativity.
So Russell Wilson spent the first decade of his career working with Trevor Moawad, his mental coach and, over time, his best friend. Before Moawad succumbed to cancer in 2021, both had mastered the art of what Moawad called “getting to neutral.”
“A nonjudgmental, unbiased way of looking at information,” Moawad said in 2020. “Accepting the past as real but not predictive.”
As Wilson returned from a calf injury Sunday night, he accepted the misfires and drops that had precipitated the booing as real. The tumultuous two years he’d weathered with the Denver Broncos were real, and the calf injury that sidelined him most of training camp and the first six weeks of the regular season was real. The 4-2 record the Steelers had achieved with Justin Fields as quarterback: also real.
But none of it was predictive.
Tapping into his well-trained…
Source link : https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/how-russell-wilson-got-back-to-neutral-064036338.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-10-24 06:40:36
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