
Photo Credit: Ric Tapia/Getty Images
Our analytics tools don’t give us this level of granularity of information, but we’re going to guess that you’re a football fan to some degree. You are an American (or at least 99+% of you, but Ni Hao to our 50 or so Chinese readers per year), and football is the de facto national pastime after all.
And if you were varying degrees of glued to your couch last weekend, specifically on Sunday evening, you might have seen it in real time: the match between the Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens. A stand-off between the two leading MVP candidates, a battle between two of the best teams in the league. The game that was pitched as the game of the year up until that point.
And if you watched it, there might be one singular moment that stuck out to you most…a dropped pass.
Baltimore was on the precipice of completing a significant comeback, a two-point conversion away from going to being down 11 points at halftime to tying the game with around 90 seconds left in the game. And a perfectly good pass from Lamar Jackson went right to the gut of one of the best tight ends in the game, Mark Andrews…and he couldn’t make the play.
For anyone who is passionate about football, it was an unfortunate moment. But why are we writing about it? Because Mark Andrews’ roots are right here…in Scottsdale.
Andrews was born right here in Scottsdale, and he cut his football teeth at Desert Mountain High School, where he was (predictably) a standout, tallying 3,674 yards and 48 touchdowns in only three years. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this is that he did so after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at a young age, an affliction that he still has to deal with multiple times during games, typically getting his blood sugar levels tested after each offensive drive.
Our local hero parlayed his Desert Mountain high school career to a starting role at the University of Oklahoma, and then to the Baltimore Ravens. He has been a three-time Pro Bowler including a 1st-Team All-Pro designation in 2021. Regardless of one bad game, he has been one of the best in the world at his craft.
To be honest, this might not be an easy one to rebound from. It’s an unfortunate truth that many pro athletes are known more by their worst moments than their best ones. As it stands, he’s already received death threats and some of the worst of humanity is showing themselves on social media.
But the guy that was pushed through type 1 diabetes to become a world-class athlete has shown that he has the strength to overcome this. And much like how Bills Mafia rallied around him and donated over $32,000 to his charity of choice after hearing about the death threats, we as a community owe it to him to lift him up and help him power through.
He could use your positivity. Along with a positive note, please consider joining Mark Andrews in his fight to defeat type 1 diabetes through his charity of choice, Breakthrough T1D. You can find the link here.