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Jeremy Maclin, 23, will begin his third season in the NFL this weekend, as a starting wide receiver in the Philadelphia Eagles' vaunted offense. A two-time All American at Missouri, Maclin was selected 19th overall in the 2009 Draft. Last season, Maclin made 70 catches for 964 yards—placing him among the league's top passcatchers. Once a week this fall, exclusively here at GQ.com, Maclin will deliver a new post that takes readers behind the scenes of the Eagles' much-hyped 2011 season—and into the private, off-field life of a young NFL star.

This summer hit me with multiple levels of uncertainty. First watching the lockout, no one having any idea what the season was going to look like. And in the midst of that I started feeling not so good. Something was not right, but at first no one could tell me what it was. I went through all these different tests. And even though I felt better as the summer wore on, my blood showed that there was a chance I had a type of lymphoma.

It felt like the lockout—and the fates of hundreds of players and millions of fans—was being decided in these closed-door meetings. And at the same time my own fate was playing out on bloodwork slides in laboratories. I had no control over any of it. It wasn't an injury that I could see and rehab. If you had asked me, I would have said that I could play football. But the way lab results were coming back, my doctors felt otherwise. There was a possibility of not being allowed to play this year. Now, aside from redshirting at Mizzou, I had never missed a game before, not since I was nine years old quarterbacking for my older brothers in St. Louis (this was during the era of Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, and the Greatest Show on Turf, so we went deep a lot). The concept of sitting out a whole season would have been like torture to me.

And while I was dealing with that, I watched the Eagles front office make these bold free agency moves—getting the info on TV and in text messages like everyone else. They were showing our players and fans that we're going for it all. I was just so excited to be a part of it—and so afraid that I would end up having to watch from the sidelines.