Nate's mindset is back on football, and he relishes every moment of being part of the team, even more so than his peers:

Nate loved practice. Not everybody on his team did. Hardly anybody loved practice, because more than anything, football practice was repetition, doing things over and over until you had them right, until you could make the decisions you had to make in the game—not just the quarterback, but everybody—in the tiny amount of time you had to make them (43).

Nate loves being a prepared football player, and he is reassured by both the familiarity and repetition of the team's procedures:

Nate loved putting on his equipment, making sure his pads were just right, loved joking with the guys when they were stretching to get themselves warmed up. And he knew that the best part of practice, what Coach called their ‘team work’—two words, not one—where they’d work on plays until they got them perfect, hadn’t even started yet (44).

Nate thinks about how Tom Brady is the best quarterback around, and also, not surprisingly, the most prepared. He also thinks about how his team is unique because “they had more plays—there were seventy-five in all—than any other eighth-grade team around” (44).