Can Ted Lasso season two possibly top season one, or does it have a case of “the yips” (don’t say it out loud.)

The charming Apple TV+ comedy that garnered an Emmy nomination for best comedy series (along with eight acting nominations) dropped the first episode of its sophomore season Friday, and just as the story picks up where the season finale ended, so do those warm fuzzy feelings you get from watching.

In season one, American football coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) gets hired by owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddington) to tank the Richmond (U.K.) football club, just so she can stick it to her ex-husband. Lasso knows nothing about coaching soccer, and initially it seems that she’s going to get her wish. But Ted is an extraordinary person, and his earnest and relentlessly positive demeanor rubs off on everyone, from Rebecca to the players, fans and staff. Even cynical journalists are feeling the Lasso love.

In the first season, Richmond’s fortunes rise high and it looks like the club will win just enough matches to stave off relegation (basically the whole club gets demoted to a lesser league), but of course, that would have been too easy, and not at all Emmy-worthy.

So season two is all about rebuilding, about dealing with change, and finding the strength to keep going after a devastating loss. And it’s about avoiding “the yips” – that superstitious but all too real feeling that you are doomed to fail and there is nothing else you can do about it.

Rebecca’s yips are about dating. She’s finally shaken off the romantic curse put on her by her loathsome ex and thinks she’s found a great match, but is she selling herself short? Aging football legend Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) reluctantly retired at the end of the first season, and tells himself that coaching his niece’s under-nine team, living with Keeley (Juno Temple) and dishing on reality television with his gal pals is enough. But is he in denial? And Ted himself can’t seem to push the team to a win, notching several tie games in succession. What’s holding him back?

Then there’s ace kicker Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernandez), who gets a major case of the yips when he accidentally kills the team mascot with a penalty shot. (It’s funnier than it sounds.) His remorse and fear is so bad, the team calls in sports psychologist Dr Sharon Fieldstone, played by Sarah Niles.

Fieldstone unnerves Ted because although she doesn’t have the easy-going jokiness that Ted shares with the team, she has something he lacks: the ability to connect. Fieldstone literally speaks the players’ language (in this case Spanish and French), meaning she communicates with members of his team in a way he never can. But it’s more than that; after Dani is ‘cured’ in one session, Ted wants to know Fieldstone’s secrets because he sees the limitations of his own abilities. Not every problem can be solved with homespun wisdom and can-do attitude.

Adding this new dimension to the story, this chink in Ted’s invincible spirit, is going to propel the story somewhere interesting. And as we see Ted’s (and everyone else’s) vulnerabilities, we won’t be losing the parts of the show we love so much. The characters are as lovable as they were when we saw them last. The show has lost none of its humor or its heart.

Ted Lasso the coach may not yet be able to score a victory, but Ted Lasso is still a winner.