ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Sitting in one of the team offices at One Bills Drive, Josh Allen is casually dressed in a red Bills T-shirt and blue mesh shorts. He’s back in Buffalo for organized team activities, getting ready for a highly anticipated sophomore season. But that’s not what he’s here to talk about today.

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On Josh’s left wrist is a thick rubber band splashed in white and blue with the words “Never Ever Give Up” branded along the side. It’s the spelled-out version of NEGU, a charity organization for kids fighting cancer. The 22-year-old quarterback never takes it off or leaves it behind. He wears it wherever he goes, whether he’s hanging out with friends, sitting in a team meeting at the Bills training facility, throwing footballs to receivers during practice or even in the thick of a regular-season game at New Era Stadium in front of 70,000 screaming football fans.

To Josh, it’s much more than a wristband with a motivational phrase. It’s a special gift from his friend, Cade Spinello — a 13-year-old cancer survivor with the resilience, strength and easygoing charm of a comic book superhero. Cade gave Josh the bracelet last year when Josh was training before the NFL Draft.

Josh hasn’t taken it off since.

“I draw inspiration from him knowing what he’s been through, what his family has been through and how he keeps on pushing forward,” Josh says. “All the obstacles that he’s seen in his life, especially at such a young age, it’s not really fair for a young kid to go through.”

When Cade was five years old, he started having problems with his eyes. His parents took him to get them checked out and doctors discovered that he had a benign brain tumor. During the operation to remove the tumor, Cade suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed the entire right side of his body and caused him to lose the ability to speak. The tumor nearly blinded him, as well — he can’t see out of his left eye and has limited vision in his right.

After two surgeries and a year-and-a-half of chemotherapy, remnants of the tumor remain.

Cade has fought on. For the past eight years, he’s worked to overcome the effects of the cancer, tumor and stroke through physical therapy, speech therapy and studying braille. The time he spends with Josh is a diversion from the tasks and an inspiration — for each of them.

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“I think Josh treats me like a regular kid. He doesn’t see me as a special needs kid. He just sees me as a friend,” Cade says. “It’s really cool to know that I look up to him, but that he looks up to me, too.”

Josh and Cade first met a few years ago, when Josh was still a college quarterback at Wyoming and intent on working toward the NFL. He connected with former NFL quarterback Jordan Palmer, who trains quarterback prospects in high school and college as well as potential NFL draft picks. Palmer runs a variety of camps, including a three-day QB Summit in Orange County, Calif.

“I’ve always been better at explaining it than doing it,” Palmer laughs through the phone from Nashville the day before the 2019 draft.

At the time he started working with Josh, Palmer was actively involved with the NEGU/Jessie Rees Foundation, inspired by 12-year-old Jessie Rees’ selflessness during her fight with two brain tumors.

“She was more concerned with other kids than she was with herself,” Palmer explains. “And she donated to other kids in the hospital by filling jars with toys and handing them out. I think she gave out like 3,000 jars. She passed away in 2012. Since then, we’ve handed out almost 300,000 jars.”

Palmer often brings kids from NEGU out to his camp to throw the football around and meet the players he works with. Cade — who lives nearby in Ladera Ranch, was good friends with Jessie and had become a fixture at NEGU — was a regular face at the camps. He got to know and play football not only with Josh, but also Jared Goff, Sam Darnold, DeShaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes and Kyle Allen.

“He’s one of our courageous kids at NEGU,” says Palmer. “During my NFL draft training and all of my QB camps, all of my guys know Cade. And Cade’s just another QB that I train, he just happens to be tougher and have a better work ethic than any of the other guys. I’m not saying that to be nice — it’s a fact. Cade had just battled, battled and battled.

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“And guys like Josh, who have big hearts and are good, honest dudes, see that and are drawn to it. He talks to him regularly but he always asks me about him. It’s a really special bond.”

During his NFL draft prep last year, Josh got to spend more time with Cade.

“He was out there every day with his dad going through drills with us and throwing the football. He was just a normal kid out there,” Josh says. “That made him feel good, made us feel good and made his dad feel good. Here’s his son just hanging out with three future NFL quarterbacks and just being one of the guys.”

Cade’s parents see a symbiotic connection between football and Cade’s health battle. As a former junior varsity football coach, Mike Spinello, 49, often draws similarities between the two.

“One of the cool things with having these experience with football players and quarterbacks is seeing how these guys work out. Cade can relate to that, seeing them in the gym, because that’s where he spends many hours,” Mike explains during a FaceTime call with him, wife Erin, Cade and eight-year-old daughter Lucy.

“He is almost like a professional athlete. He has to work out, go to school and work out again. So when you frame it that way, it’s like a rite of passage,” adds Erin, 44. “It keeps him motivated. Because of his vision, he still trips and his clothes get dirty. We remind him that when football players come off the field with dirty uniforms, their coaches praise them. You’re supposed to fall. You’re supposed to get dirty. Football in general is just a cool picture of what Cade is doing. It’s inches and yards.”

Every single day, Cade fights for more yardage.

“For me, on a regular basis, I have reading, physical therapy, then braille at school, and then I have school, too. So getting through my day is probably the hardest thing,” Cade says. “I wouldn’t say that I get down about it. It’s more about getting through it.”

At 13, Cade has a lot of the same hobbies as other kids his age. He likes superhero movies, and even though he doesn’t have full range of motion on the right side of his body, that hasn’t stopped him from playing football, baseball and basketball. He’s also a huge Bills fan, and proudly sports the team’s logo on his ankle brace.

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“He plays baseball, you know?” Josh says. “He goes out there and catches the ball with his glove, changes the glove and then throws it with the same hand, which is unbelievable. He swims, throws the football around. He does everything a normal kid would do. He’s just had different circumstances he’s had to go through to do it.”

Cade also likes getting up in front of other kids at school assemblies or a room full of people at charity events to share his story, answer questions about special needs kids and spread his message of never giving up.

“It’s really cool to do,” Cade says. “After, we always ask everyone if they have any questions. It’s really cool to answer all of their questions. To see what they’re thinking and how they respond when they see somebody with a disability.”

“Cade still has word-finding (trouble). But he fields all these questions from kids and works through them as he’s talking,” Erin explains. “Anytime we can share, we do it. Courage is contagious. When he starts sharing, kids start looking at what’s hard in their lives, and it becomes this beautiful thing.”

During a trip out to Buffalo last season to see a Bills game and hang out with Josh, Cade delivered his speech in front of the entire team. He told everyone in the room to cover their left eye with their hand, and then cover half of their right to demonstrate how much he’s able to see. With his dad by his side flipping through pictures on an iPad, which help Cade remember and identify words, he spoke the trials he faces on a daily basis. The players, coaches and staff were visibly moved.

“For him to come out here and tell his story to the team, you could just feel the energy and emotion in the room. You could hear a pin drop,” Josh says. “I still get goosebumps talking about it.”

“This is a kid who eight years ago, completely lost his speech,” says Mike. “Before the stroke, he was verbally off the charts. He’d have conversations with adults. After, he couldn’t talk at all. He was battling to get his words back. I’m sitting there, holding his iPad as he’s sharing his story with the Bills, I’m like, how did we get here? Where he was eight years ago to now is amazing.”

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While in Buffalo, Cade also attended a Sabres game and took a ride on the Zamboni during intermission. He even got to call plays for the Bills offense during practice, whispering “this is so awesome” to himself in between plays as he tried to digest it all.

“For me it was like, is this really happening? I’m calling plays through a quarterback’s helmet?” Cade laughs. “I like the whole team. I got to know the whole team.”

“It was absolutely surreal,” adds Erin. “I didn’t know what to expect, I had never been to Buffalo. It’s just that town where everyone is pulling for the same team. I love that, and I love the community. The entire team took time and paused. They also absolutely made Lucy feel like a Rockstar. I knew it was going to be amazing but it far exceeded all of that. We felt we came away with lifetime friends.”

Before Josh became an NFL quarterback, he was content to get to know Cade and make him feel like one of the guys. Now that he has a larger platform, he’s only strengthened the bond. Bringing them to Buffalo was just the beginning. In January, Josh surprised Cade for his 13th birthday.

“(Mike) sent me a text and asked me if I would mind sending him a video for his birthday, saying what’s up,” Josh says. “And I was like, you know what, I’m only 25 minutes away from you guys. I’ll be there in the morning and I’ll bring some donuts.”

When Cade went to answer the door, he suspected his parents were giving him another birthday surprise. When he saw that it was Josh, he says he felt honored.

“Josh is always genuinely happy to see him,” adds Mike. “Just seeing the interest that he takes and the care, and being aware of the influence that he has on Cade. As a dad, I’m just so grateful for the role he has played in Cade’s life and all of our lives.”

Palmer, who is responsible for bringing the two together, has enjoyed seeing Josh and Cade’s friendship grow and evolve.

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“I don’t think you always have to look up to people who are older than you,” he says. “Young quarterbacks look up to people like Josh Allen. But guys like Josh get to know Cade and see something they don’t have — a grit, toughness, the ability to deal with adversity, a short memory. All these things that QBs need in the NFL. Sometimes you can look to a 13-year-old kid and get it, and I think that’s what Josh has done.”

That’s why Josh continues to wear the “Never Ever Give Up” wristband, and he’s not the only one. DeShaun Watson and Sam Darnold have sported it, as has Trevor Lawrence with Clemson. It’s been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, with five different athletes wearing it on their wrists. When Patrick Mahomes makes his debut on the cover of Madden 2020, the blue-and-white NEGU wristband will be visible.

It shows the type of impact Cade and his friends at NEGU have had on the sports world, though it’s not confined to professional athletes. Everyone can learn something from their stories of perseverance.

“I kind of compare my story to his, with all the obstacles in my football career and things not really going my way early,” Josh says. “I look at them and think, this kid has had so much more to go through. And if he can get through all of that then I can push forward, as well, whether it’s in a workout or whatever the case may be throughout life.

“I can look at Cade and his family with what they’ve done, and I can push through with him in my heart and mind.”

(Top photo courtesy of Mike Spinello)

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