I’m falling behind my eight-game, Part 2

I received a ton of responses to this one (well, three but that’s a “ton” in malaphor world), telling me I missed the most obvious conflation: “behind the eight ball” and “(not) on (one’s) A-game” (not performing at the highest level). Exactly! As Bruce Ryan pointed out, “eight” and “a” is a good example of a homophone (two words that sound alike but have different meanings). This clearly caused the malaphor here. A big thanks to Bruce, Yvonne Stam, and John Costello for pointing this out.