Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Crying Game: A Scientific Voyage into the Tear Ducts of Caleb Williams and Bill Belichick

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

A viral video of a weeping Caleb Williams, the top prodigy in this week’s draft, “scares the sh*t out of a lot of NFL teams.” So correspondent Dave Fleming breaks out the tissues — and a stack of research — to discover what the science of crying disproves about the pseudo-science of scouting; why a Super Bowl locker room was like a scene out of “The Notebook”; and how even the Darth Vader of football (allegedly) choked up. Plus: Domonique Foxworth names names — and changes our basic understanding of the most masculine of sports. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. He was crying before we left the tunnel, a half-empty Cleveland Brown's guaranteed win. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draft King's Network. So Dave Fleming, I am not proud of what about to tell you, but I am not a crier. I grew up Roman Catholic, all boys' education, I walk around and my tear ducks,

my soul is in a state of clench. Well, that makes us the perfect couple for this because I bet I'm in the 99th percentile for adult male criers across the world. Wait, what's the sort of thing that triggers you into shedding tears? I have personal things that I've gone through, but I think it's trained me to

I'm comfortable with crying. There was the Netflix, it was recently, it was called One Day. Imagine one selected day struck out of your life and think how different its course would have been. This couple that they meet each other, their soulmates, they meet each other in college, but they keep missing each other. And it's one day every year for their entire relationship until they finally get together and then tragedy ensues.

So I just need you to know that Dave Fleming really did not intend to describe the NFL draft just now, even though he did. By giving us this plot summary of a Netflix series, that sounds terrible. I have not seen it, admittedly. But I have been thinking about a different, tragically desperate once-a-year ritual where people dream of settling down with a mysterious college student, who almost invariably breaks their heart. And the number one pick in the NFL draft this year is going to be this University of Southern California student named Caleb Williams. And if you watch tape of Caleb Williams, what you will see pretty immediately is that he can run and throw like Patrick Mahomes.

And he can also do that thing that quarterbacks do, where he brings plays back from the debt. Williams has time against a four-man rush, back fiddling, scanning, now running out of time, circling back, joystick on the move again, Are you kidding me? It's a highlight. One of the biggest problems with Caleb Williams, it turns out, was also captured on video. And this was right after USC lost University of Washington last fall.

And it's actually the whole reason I asked Dave Fleming, who is a journalist that's covered two dozen NFL drafts and can consequently smell front-off his bullshit from miles away to help me report this story. Because one of the biggest problems with Caleb Williams, is this clip of Caleb Williams crying. Caleb Williams jumping up and laying in the arms of family there. Yeah. Tough night. Battled. Sure did.

He knows the reality of what a third loss means. That's tough. But as brilliant as his two years will be in LA, it's not going to result in a Pac-12 championship. Yeah. Played. Well, led his... led his team, did all he could. He just came up a bit short.

The announcers there, I would characterize their tone as uncomfortably polite. What did you see there? Spell it out for us. When he starts heaving, when he's, it's the full body convulsion crying in his mom's arms. He's jumped into the stands after the game. Right. Watching it now, I'm not proud of it. and I think you can be supportive of men showing their emotions in their way they want.

But that still left me feeling a little weird. Yes. So the context here is it's November 4th, 2023. This is last season. USC has just lost to Washington. 52 to 42. USC is now 7 and 3 for the season here. And Caleb Williams has jumped into the stands.

And in the first row, there are his parents. And he is being, I would say, like, just. visually being cradled, right? I mean, that's not an exaggeration. No, no, no, no. And they have to, his mom is holding him. And as his body is fully convulsing, there's a piece of paper that is very conveniently located

where she shields him, like a privacy curtain. Well, it's almost, so she understands, too, that this is sort of uncomfortable or strange and is trying to protect him by covering, that was really telling, too, that the mom understood how, Good field awareness. Yeah.

She had very good vision there. And then he just sort of let go. It felt like a nativity scene. A nativity scene come to life in the stains of a college football game. I got to say, I saw the dad. The dad was kind of doing a Pablo, what I would imagine is a Pablo Pat. It's like, okay, you're fine. 100% not totally in tune with my real emotions.

But on top of that, I reached out to a guy who's really well-connected, a former scout really well connected across the NFL with GMs and front offices, and I was blown away by his reaction. What did the scout tell you that you can report? I hated it. Hated it. He would scare the shit out of me if I was working for a team. Raw emotion is great, but Caleb's thing, that was ridiculous to me.

That threw up major red flags. You just lost a game in the middle of your fucking season, and it was like your third loss in the Pac-12, and you went hugging on mommy and crying in mommy's arms, and it just seems really freaking weak and nuts. And I will tell you, he scares the shit out of a lot of NFL teams, too. The book on him is he's just kind of a weird kid. One GM told me it's like if Prince played quarterback,

look, I don't know him from Adam. I do not know him. But to me, that looked weak as shit, really fragile. And so this is part of why, I wanted to do this episode is because as much as I want to be the enlightened person, I want to acknowledge what seems different about this. It's telling that like NFL scouts feel this, random bloggers feel this, talking heads feel this.

We have never seen this. It just looked like he was in a fetal position while he was on the wall. And all it took was his mom putting her arm under his legs. And she's like literally holding her child like a baby. Definitely wanted the weakest moves. not the weakest move I've ever seen by an athlete. 12-year-old just struck out for the first time in Little League type shit. But it's like, man, it kind of keeps me from wanting to hang out with him, to be honest.

Okay, yeah, I'm not hanging out with the dude who paints his nails. If you are on a boat, wouldn't you want your captain if it's slowly going down to be the calmest, coolest head on the boat? Caleb Williams, to sum it up, he's soft, he's a crybaby, and I implore any NFL scouts to keep this pathetic scene in mind when concocting their idea of what a leader on an NFL team looks like. Grunk feels this for the record here.

I can definitely see this being a 50-50 split. I was kind of split with myself as well. I was like, all right, that's a little bit too much. Like, why is he crying? But then at the same time, I'm like, maybe he's a mama boy. I don't normally take my emotional cues from Rob Grankowski, but in this case, I think a lot of us felt the same way.

It's like we're not sure how to process this. Yeah, but I feel like, Ronk is probably on some level taking his cues from the guy he played for, right? The Hall of Famer, Bill Belichick, the most emotionally withholding dad in the history of America, I would argue, is that dude. This organization hasn't had these sort of issues in the past. Yeah, well, we're on to Cincinnati. Bill, do you think, you imagine Tom's age at the draft? We're on to Cincinnati.

Well, do you think having a 37-year-old? We're on to Cincinnati. Well, I hate to sort of break it to you, but going all the way. back to a couple of Super Bowls and things that I've witnessed in person and gone down the rabbit hole on, Bill Belichick might just turn out to be more like Caleb Williams than any of us really want to believe. So we have to get to that, that investigation. We have to get to, I think, a scientific understanding of what we're all doing here as both the humans who cry and the humans who observe the criers. And then also we should talk to the football people.

And they can explain how much behind the scenes actually can be made fun of or not. Get your tissues ready, Pablo. The simple act of crying has confused scientists for centuries. I don't know if you know this, but humans are the only creatures on earth who will secrete tears because we are in our feelings, because we're sad, because we're happy, because we just lost the University of Washington. All of that is unique to the human condition. And no less in authority than Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary. theory, wrote a seminal text in 1872 that was titled, The Emotional Expression of Man and Animals.

And Darwin could not think of a single, logical, evolutionary reason why human faces would involuntarily leak the salty water at emotional moments. Charles Darwin actually declared weeping to be, quote, purposeless, end quote. Which makes him not totally unlike that a anonymous NFL scout that got interviewed by Dave Fleming. I want people not watching on YouTube or the Draftings Network to know that you've made a mess of my desk. You have a sheaf of papers here full of research and scientific literature. This is edited down, too.

I could have gotten it all the way over there, too. The basic question that I needed help with was, why do we cry at all? And so who answered that question for you? We went to a renowned psychiatrist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Her name is Lauren Bilesma. I was looking through some of the articles and things you sent me and just this fascinates me, right? Just to no end. I'm not a football expert, by the way, so you might have to explain some things to me too.

She has studied crying probably more than anyone else in the United States. It is kind of surprising, like given how important and you. ubiquitous phenomena that crying is like pretty much everyone has cried at some point in their life. It is surprising there isn't more research on it. It's gotten somewhat better in the past, you know, 15 years or so since I got into this area, but there's still remarkably few people around the world that are studying. I wonder if you get tired of hearing that Darwin's, he was so critical of it. Why do you think that? Well, he wasn't, he just didn't know. Like, he couldn't find the reason that people cry. So he concluded that,

tears didn't serve any purpose, that it was just sort of an incidental purposeless secretion of tears. It didn't really have any function. It was just sort of an incidental thing. So I don't know that he was critical, but just that he didn't understand, like, what the functions were at the time. She studied the psychophysiology behind crying. Evolutionary theories suggest that the reason we evolved here was to elicit help from

others, starting with when we're babies and we're listening to help from our mother or other caregivers. And then as we get older, it becomes kind of repurpose to getting help from others in our social environment. She told me it's based on four million years of evolution. Yeah, that's not great for Caleb Williams' scouting report. It's, oh, it's, it's fine. He's just like four million years worth of babies crying for their mom. Yeah, and the real red flag to NFL teams and NFL Scouts was who he cried to and who he cried with. It's weird that he's crying to his mom. It's weird that he's crying after a meaningless loss.

But it's even, it disturbs us. If he's going to cry, right, you should be crying with your teammates. Right. We're your family now. Exactly. We're your football family. That's supposed to matter the most in the context of this game. And it's immediately then they flip that to what's wrong with this guy that he didn't cry in his

linemen's arms. Why did he go fetal position with his mommy instead of his teammates? It's about who you look to for help. Did you watch the Caleb Williams clip? Yeah, yeah, I did look at that one just before. I mean, that one seemed a bit more intense than I would usually see in football because usually it's more like you see some tears running down their face. You know, I think I could see why there might have been more backlash there

because it did seem, you know, more like childlike in that way and not something we typically see like it did seem. like he lost more control than we typically see. Some people might turn to their teammates when they're crying. And, you know, he turned to his family, but I have seen others where they're sort of like getting hugs from their teammates or their coach and, you know, where it does seem to kind of facilitate that bonding. And I think maybe for the first time in my entire career,

the scouts lined up with the science. But in terms of why this is really happening, like biologically inside of Caleb Williams, what are we even able to say about that? Like, why is he doing this? Why can't he control himself, in other words? This really, this is the fascinating payoff for why we went down this rabbit hole, because the science of crying is telling us exactly the opposite what the NFL front offices are.

There is some evidence that crying, when at first, the peak right before crying starts, is sort of like where you have the most physiological arousal, like the most what we call like the fight or flight response or sympathetic activity or your heart's like beating faster, you're breathing faster, that sort of thing. And then crying sort of marks that transition to more parasympathetic activity, kind of the rest and digest system. It's more commonly known as kind of that marker of going back to homeostasis. So the science backs up Caleb on this.

It's incredible. It is a signal from our body that it's like Caleb cared so much about this basically random regular season game that his body it short-circuited on him. I mean, how do you, if you're a scout, and this bullsh-shsh is what we hear all the time about, we want guys

who love the game. Yeah, you have that dog in you. Yeah, we just want guys who live, breathe, and all of a sudden, now they're dinging him for something that the science actually says. Is the biggest proof that you care as much as we want you to.

Welcome to NFL scouting, basically. Is there any scenario where that kind of a reaction, that kind of crying, is a sign of, like, weakness or instability or something that, like, an evaluator should be worried about? I think we'd only really, really worried if it was impacting their functioning. Like, maybe if he, like, stopped in the middle of a play and went to go cry and didn't finish the play, then we'd be pretty concerned. Like, if it's impacting your work or your social relationships, that's how we evaluate any

mental health disorder. but if it's not getting in the way of anything, we wouldn't necessarily be concerned about it. And he clearly had really intense feelings on that moment. If someone were to say maybe their child died or they're in a war zone looking on some horrible, you know, scenes of destruction, we would never judge someone to cry like that in that scenario.

But, you know, it was a football game. So maybe, you know, people might have seen it as a bit, bit of, you know, extreme reaction. Yeah, I find it interesting, right, that fans are the fans who like trash, their TV and throw it out the window are like, oh, Caleb Williams lost control of his emotion. You know, I'd be more concerned about the people who threw their TV's out of the window than him crying if that's how to give my professional opinion.

I do now just want to send her like about, I don't know, two dozen videos of like Cowboys fans. Oh, and by the way, we've already reserved a spot in her crying lab for you later. Amazing. But the person I actually want to put into that crying lab, though, is the person you mentioned before. Like Bill Belichick, right? I'm now imagining the human brain. I'm imagining crying as the point of peak intensity that says to everybody,

look how much I care about this, so much so that my body is making me quit. But I also can't imagine Bill Fibchuk actually crying, dude. So in February of 2008, I'm at the Super Bowl, where the Patriots, they're 18 and O, they blow their chance at literally immortality. Yes, to the Giants the first time. Steps up.

Throws. Downfield, broken up. Two seconds left is the Giants take over. In the locker room afterwards, I'm at that game. I'm in the locker room. And the weight of what they had just sort of lost out on hits everybody,

including our man Bill Belichick. Wait, okay. So what did you? you see, Phlegm? Well, that's a good question because I, you know, all the things, the research that we stirred up all the rabbit holes that you sent me down made me remember being in that locker room. And so I'm getting feedback from everyone who was in that room that it was like Belichick was choked up. Belichick was close to tears. Belichick was, and it's important for what we're doing our study on Caleb, we need to know if the Darth Vader

of the NFL cried, then it's okay for everybody to cry. If his comp is Bill Belichick on some level, this is news we could use. And so I reached out to a really good friend of mine, Seth Wickersham, who is probably one of the foremost experts and has studied the Patriots. Right. On the Patriots. Yeah. Knows and has spoken to probably more than anyone. And we were at that game together. We were in the locker room together.

And then basically, after debating this back and forth, what we agreed upon was. Yeah, what's the threshold? We can confirm moisture around the eyes is as far as we could go. So the question of is moisture tears? Sometimes on this show we put a lot of work into stupid things. We take stupid things very seriously. Yes. I just want people to understand how much legwork we put into just getting the ability to say with confidence,

there was moisture because we asked, I mean, how many people did you talk to? Oh, dozens. So I've returned from this particular rabbit hole. This is another piece of paper with just many, names were written. Yes, I have my homework assignment finished, Pablo. And I made a list. And I'm sure I probably left some people off. But I mean, the list of people that we reached out basically with the question, have you ever seen Bill Belichick cry? I mean, it got to that point. And the first person that I asked that to was Roosevelt Colvin, who was a linebacker,

old school linebacker on the Patriots. On that team. Yes. And he responded something like, L.O.L. Never seen Bill cry. And that is the response we basically got from everybody. I'll just go down the list, right? We've got Seth. We've got Chad Finn, who is a reporter in Boston. We've got Stacey James, the longtime PR VP at the Patriots. And what did the PR person say, the official mouthpiece of Belichick once upon a time? This is so funny, right?

Because there's a taboo element to crying, right? Especially in football. Of course. But he got right back to me and was like, no, Bill is, I've never seen Bill cry. Even when Bill told the team that his father had died, the players cry. and the players got emotional, but Bill didn't. Classic. Classic Belichick.

Yeah. I reached out to a long-time associate and close friend of Bill Belichick's who confirmed immediately never seen Bill cry. I will also point out another reporter replied, are you kidding me? Sociopaths don't cry. Well, it got to the point where I had to DM. I was like, all right. Teddy Bruskeesky, did you ever see Belichick cry?

said, can't say I recall BB shedding tears over the game, period, like immediately. Like, no. Yeah. So the closest we got was moisture around the eyes. I also talked to Ian O'Connor, who wrote 500 pages. Another book. Right. On Belichick, you know, I searched that book.

There are four mentions of the word tears in those 500 pages. And Ian O'Connor and Tom Curran, they both sent me further down. this stupid rabbit hole, Pablo. This is my life now. It is. By recommending they said, oh, check out the 30 for 30 called two bills.

Yeah, this is the Bill Parcells Bill Belichick doc they made. Right. And it's basically a scene of him in the depths of old giant stadium, Cinderblock offices, where he used to grind through tape

when he was a nobody with the Giants. You think about that and who you were back then. You have a different perspective on it yeah 20 years later do it i probably wouldn't probably wouldn't probably like this that i'd be standing here you know like this um you know i was just trying to do it establish my coaching career be a good coach win some games and um man we want a lot of them here voice so this is a great is this history it's a great organization do it come on

Come on. Yeah. It's hard not to get choked up with that. A tear, do it. Damn, I spend a lot of hours in the room. Unclench. Cry, you bastard! Unclench the fist around your heart.

Can you hear you ride the bike, go through three or four games of the next team we were going to play. Oh, come on. I had never seen that before until just now. If you just listen to it, you listen to his breathing. Yes. He gets, there's a choked-upiness, and there is a linguistic tell. Yeah, we even got the sort of the hopscotchy, the, it was like, so I don't, I mean, I, I don't know what is the physiological rules that constitute crying? We came as close as humanly possible right there.

Yes, some constipated ducks. Right. In this way, I kind of relate to Belichick, honestly, like watching him fight it. Like watching him trying to just like not get pinned by his parasympathetic nervous system. I know. And wasn't it interesting, too, he was subconsciously, he was rubbing his own neck. Then he turned away like, I don't want to do this.

He tried to walk away. And I think the other thing that's really important that ties into what we've been talking about, he's almost broke down in tears. He's talking about going over, grinding through game film. That and, okay, but that matches what he loves and what he intensely and physically loves about the game was that kind of shit.

So it's very clear to me that maybe the only thing that's more uncomfortable than watching someone cry in his mommy's arms is watching Bill Belichick try not to cry while thinking about grinding film for Bill Parcells. And it reminds me, given the work we put into just getting to that, that shred of moisture, which may confirm the moisture that you recall seeing that we need to talk to somebody who is less in their head about this. Because there are players, I am told, who are, you know, willing to actually speak freely on the, record. And I have a feeling they're probably less awkward. But like, I got the trigger response of like, I want to go give Bill Belichick a hug. It did feel like watching your dad try his hardest to not cry in front of you. Yes. Yes. I genuinely felt sad for him in that situation watching that where it was like, oh, man, just have a good cry. Which gets to the question of like, okay, he's the boss.

Okay. That is the guy who sets the emotion. emotional temperature for the NFL at large when it comes to how players are supposed to act. And yet, as somebody who's covered the league forever, there's an interesting paradox, right? I have been telling people for years that there is a ton of crying in the NFL, 10 times more than anybody would ever imagine. Especially at the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl locker rooms at the Super Bowl after the game, it is like a group reviewing of the movie. be the notebook. Everybody's bawling. People are crying because they're happy. People are crying because they're sad. People are crying because it's over. They're jumping into each other's arms. It hides in plain sight. So I think it's a little bit about what we don't want to see. And yet, it's not easy

to get someone to be like, yep, bald continuously. Even the attempts to just confirm stupid little details has we've been met by brick walls all over the place. It's just not a thing that's easy for guys to even really reflect on necessarily. And yet, I found someone, and of course this person was down to actually give us the truth on this. Dominique, I've summoned you back onto the show because, of course I did. It was only a matter of time before I said, hey, you tell me about what it was like to do the thing that I never did. And tell me about the fluids you did it with.

But thank you for being here. No problem, buddy. Happy to be here. I called up Dominique Foxworth. to give us a sense of like, okay, who are the people that you have seen personally cry? And what does that say about who does the most crying in the hardest, most masculine of sports? Hopefully I'm far enough away. Statue of limitations okay to name some of these names. These are the names that you want to hear.

The people who cried, who I saw crying and I saw most broken up over wins and losses, were the Hall of Famers, the superstars, the all-time greats. And it wasn't even crying after losses. I remember a Thursday night game after I signed my contract and I'm in Baltimore, we went to Cleveland play a Thursday night game. The Browns are terrible. They seemingly always are terrible. We're standing in the tunnel about to go out on the field.

I look over and I see Ray Lewis with his eyes full of tears and tears start flowing down his face. I've always looked at this particular moment. It like stands out to me because he'd already won a Super Bowl. He'd already established himself as like this is an early career Ray Lewis. He'd already won a Super Bowl. He'd already established himself as probably the best linebacker of all time. And this like mundane-ass game for me, for me, for me, this is a mundane game. So for him, like this has, he was so intense that he was in tears. He had worked himself up to a point that he was crying before we left a tunnel, a half empty Cleveland Brown's guaranteed win. And I just remember thinking that obviously, physically were different, but this is also why

we're different. Like, I can't get there emotionally. And I've seen that for other great players and Ed was also somebody who was like incredibly emotional a lot of times. Ed Reed. Yeah. Arguably the greatest at his position. No argument. He is. Like, I mean, Bill Belichick would agree. He is not an argument. These are two greatest at their positions. And they were so emotionally invested. I think Terrell Suggs fits in this category also of someone who would have more aggressive emotional swings based on the outcomes of games. And I think this had something to do with how good they were. Me and all the rest of the mediocre football players, no crying.

We were crying. I never cried as a result of a game in NFL. I've given up game-winning touchdowns. I've made incredible game-winning plays. None of them have ever moved me to tears. But you know what would have made me cry? if I tore up my knee the year before my contract, I'd have cried my eyes out then because that shit was about me.

It's direct proof of the theories that we're working off of, which is it was everything to them. And the tears are proof of that. Right. Because you literally can't cry. Your body cannot cry unless you are pushed to the brink emotionally and physically. That's the only thing that can make you cross the bridge to parasympathetic response. So it's Ray Lewis is like, I mean, again, can you have a better example of the science that we're talking about?

One and six doesn't define who you are. What defines who you are is what you do when you're one and six. What the man you will fight for. Just everything you got today, not because of the schoolboy, but because when this game ends, you have a brother to call for life. No one you gave everything you had. That's why you play as a raven. That's why you fight as a raven. What was fascinating to me was Dominique sort of acknowledging, I can't cry, I'm not going to cry,

because it doesn't mean the same thing to me as it meant to Ray. So this gets to a theory that Dominique presents us, because Dominique is also very self-aware, right? And he's saying, look, yeah, I played seven years in the NFL as a cornerback. Yes, I was in all these locker rooms organizing them as the president of their union. I know the landscape of the league. All of that is so. But also, he has a theory about who cries the most and who, doesn't. And so he continues to sort of like lie on the therapy couch for us.

My theory on the reason why these like all-time greats and super important significant players are the ones that are crying is because they've never been confronted with that business side of football. They still have that childlike pop Warner feeling about a family because they got Dre got drafted in the first round and was great from the time. And the team always wanted to keep him. And they never drafted anybody over him. And he never felt like it was in jeopardy. So I feel like, and this is my theory,

is same thing for quarterbacks as I feel like their connection to the game and to the team and to the passion of it, it has never been eroded by the ugliness of the experience of the mediocre guy, and they still feel that way. And I jealous of them for a number of reasons, but that's one of them. It connects exactly to the research that we've done, which is their teammates and everything, the sport of football remains one big family for them. And so, of course, they'd be more likely to cry because they're around family.

And from an evolutionary standpoint, they're more comfortable. If they're going to cry and signal for help, you do it. in front of people who care about you enough to respond. And then somebody who understands the business of the game. It comes a realist and or a cynic. Right. Those people aren't your family members. Your family are your family members.

Obviously, you can look at any of the great players' lives and things off the field and on the field have been difficult for them in many ways. But I do think that the way that I had to confront my career mortality a number of times earlier, it like shrinks whatever space I have in my heart for that genuine, beautiful Hollywood style. Right. Friday nights. Friday night lights level, yeah, sobbing. Yeah, that, that, that, I miss it. I loved it. It was great. I remember crying at my last high school football game because it did feel like those guys, me and those guys, it was something

special. It felt like in those moments, nothing mattered more. And I remember, like, looking back on it, I fractured my elbow senior year. And I was playing. It's the dumbest shiver. I was the best player in the state, maybe, or at least on the team in the county. We had nothing to play for. We weren't going to win the championship. But these are my guys. This matters. Had I been confronted with the same choice in later years or in college or in NFL, it would be less likely to do it. And it would be more based on how is this going to impact my career, not got to be there for my guys.

It brings us all the way back to Caleb, right? Because Caleb Williams doing this after loss number three in a season in which he was already going to be the number one overall pick. He was the number one overall pick before the season started. Remember, he could have sat out all of the, these games. I want to, I want to mention how Caleb Williams played in this game, right, to give a sense of, like, what he cares about here. Because Caleb Williams' statistics, four touchdowns, three passing, one rushing, passed for over 300 yards, USC scored 42 points.

It's a keeper. William's running for his life. Fires to the end zone. Jeff, a touchdown race, open that time. Washington just happened to score 52. And so, no, Caleb made mistakes in this game, no question. But the point is, it's not that he is mourning the loss of his individual draft stock. In fact, he identifies with his defense, seemingly, as a family member would. And that's what he's reacting to, the fact that all of them lost together. Yeah, it's incredible that we've come almost full circle now, right? That it was like, that was the most Ray Lewis thing Caleb Williams could have done.

At that point, this shit matters to him. Right. It matters in ways that you delusionally hope every player you get feels, but only the best of the best, according to Dominique Foxworth, ever really get to. And it just raises the last part of our understanding of Caleb Williams, which is that this mommy thing is still kind of extreme. To quote the great,

the theologian Rob Grancowski. It was a little weird. So this is where we acknowledge that none of it is as simple as we were necessarily hoping it would be. And isn't that awesome? Yeah, no, this is why we're here.

Because I also asked Dominique, like, okay, so I understand this now. Your confidential view of locker rooms has now been made public. What about Caleb specifically, though? When it comes to your mommy, why are you flying, Like that part, I'm like, yeah, dude.

I think isn't that why we're here, right? Is that it's like we are all, we can hold two separate thoughts in our minds at the same. This is not just meathead locker room football talk, right? What else is like this? Is there anything else that is like watching Caleb Williams in the stands with his mom? What other great moments in weeping in your mommy's arms history even are there in the NFL? This one, this comp is not going to help him. Okay.

And I actually have heard scouts talk about this comp, right? The only other quarterback I know who cried in his mommy's arms was Jeff George. That's not good. No. Despite signing the most lucrative rookie deal at the time, George struggled mightily in his first three seasons for the Colts. He threw just 33 touchdowns to 40 interceptions and went 12 and 26 as a starter. Here's a throw on first down.

Okay, so Jeff George noted famous draft bust from the 90s. The worst leader out of any quarterback ever. That was his rep. He got drafted in 1990, first overall out of Illinois. So he got hurt when he was at Purdue before Illinois. He got hurt. He was put on the little golf cart, right? And his mom came down and sat with him and put her arm around him as they took him off the...

I mean, it's a terrible... That's so sad. It's a terrible... Look, if you're a quarterback, scouts don't forget stuff like this, right? It's all about comps. That is a comp that scares the crap out of them because I guarantee a handful of scouts lost their jobs over Jeff George. And so this is where it is time, I think, officially.

Now that we've slandered Caleb Williams with the ultimate slur, the Jeff George Cup, I feel like we should listen to what Caleb himself said after the game. Because I don't think many people have actually done this part, where we actually let him speak for himself and have him explain what went on in his own brain. The emotions after the game is, you know, it is what it's been since I was, I don't know, ever since I lost my first game as a, you know, as a little kid.

So I'm having fun with it. Still have the same passion and care that I did for when I was younger, if not more. And so those raw emotions come out. And I was actually good until I, you know, kind of the mother's touch that you get sometimes, you know. You're all good. you're holding it in, you know, being the man. And then, you know, you get around your mom, touch your mom,

hug your mom, your mom said something to you. And then, you kind of just, you know, it just started flowing out. So, blocking out the noise, I think it's, I mean, I think it's kind of funny after the game. It doesn't really bother me because those emotions are going to happen until, you know, I'm probably done playing. And so what is the forecast here, Flem? You are the guy who's been to every draft and every combine,

and now you get to play the role of how, is this end for Caleb Williams? What do we find out about how Caleb Williams has potentially reframed what it means to be a mama's boy?

I'm telling you, if you followed NFL scouting, the pseudoscience of NFL scouting at all over the last 20 years, if Caleb Williams even does, has a decent rookie season, right? A year from now, NFL scouts are going to be asking

prospective franchise quarterbacks, why didn't you cry more? And just that phrase, a mother's touch, it's such a like, wizened old man sort of verbiage for something that it turns out,

he's not alone in feeling when it comes to his NFL fraternity. You reminded me about the mother's touch thing and I had to go to a funeral about a year and a half ago and it was for my wife's uncle. And, like, it's my wife's uncle. He's a great guy.

But, like, we weren't close. I was bringing the family, but like, I'm supposed to be the support guy at this one. Like, I'm supposed to be there to support everyone else because they're going to go through this major loss, not me. My kids started crying. My wife is consoling me at this ceremony, trying to find more tissues because I'm like, this is their first experience with, like, a loss. I'm a gross mess. and I'm trying to be strong for my kids who have since recovered. They're not crying.

And like I'm the furthest, like not furthest relative from the deceased, but I'm in there looking like we were brothers. You're in there looking like a number one draft pick who might just request an equity share of the Chicago Bears. I was crying like a Heisman trophy winner in that motherfucker. I was crying like a future Hall of Famer. That's how connected I was in that moment. And it was all because there are certain buttons that you don't have access to that certain people can push. And for me, that day, it was my kids.

And they pushed it. And I was looking for it so I could hit that switch off. But I couldn't. I couldn't for the life of me. And I understand whatever was going on with Caleb, I've been there. I would ask people who still want to judge Caleb to think about their own triggers, right? The things that would set them off.

I mean, that's where how I access, 95% of my tears are memories of a loss. And when you think about it that way, and if you admit it, right, and you're vulnerable enough to admit that we all have those, it's hard to judge Caleb now. Yeah, now I just feel like you're just talking to me directly, personally,

Like somewhere inside of you, there is a person with full emotional capabilities. Just find the key that unlocks you. Let yourself be unlocked is now the feeling I get from you at the end here. It's in there. It's in there. We'll find it together. We're on to Cincinnati. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

Do-to-ta-to-to-do.