The problem with sports analogies is that it treats every state as a new, consecutive round, inning, or game in a series, where everything can potentially reset each time, and a team down in the first 4 innings may clean up in the next 5. And that's a tempting analogy when each set of states may be days or weeks after the last. So that's how you get people saying "well, he could knock it out of the park in California and New Jersey and reset the balance".
Except, primaries aren't the World Series or a game of tennis or whatever. Because while a candidate can always fight hard and try to take a big point state later in the election, and maaaaybe they can change the skews a little more in their favor, it's not like a new game where anything can suddenly happen. It doesn't work that way, because a state's demographics, beliefs, and ideals don't just magically reset. Those things are locked in. And those are the most important parts. So you can't just say "well, yeah, my candidate is down, but they still have a chance to win because X delegates are left" because while player Y may play a better game in the third quarter, the demographics of say, California, isn't going to spontaneously change wholesale in order to grant your candidate the nomination.
