Pablo Torre Finds Out - Unlocking the Secrets of Quarterback Camelot, with Seth Wickersham

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

No job in America is more scrutinized, except for (maybe) the presidency. And yet no job is more misunderstood — even by the stars who mastered it. On the eve of a new football season, Pablo joins journalism's foremost QB scholar for a case study in royalty: How do the Mannings keep producing under-center superstars? What connects the Golden Age of Hollywood to John Elway? Is Tom Brady’s newsletter right about fatherhood? And why do Nick Saban’s assistants call him “Daddy”?• Buy Seth Wickersham’s new book, "American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/789617/american-kings-by-seth-wickersham/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre finds out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly, because today we're going to find out what this sound is. Louisville Soul Train! Right after this ad. So I keep getting these emails from Tom Brady. Oh, oh, as it happens. As it happens, your subscriber as well.

I am. Yeah, to $1.99, his very exclusive mailing list, which we get updates about his trips to Japan. Exactly. How to make a margarita. How to make a margarita. How to refute what Scottie Schaeffler said about fatherhood. You know, that's why I talk about families being my priority, because it really is. You know, I'm blessed to be able to come out here and play golf. But if my golf ever started affecting my home life or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or with my son, you know, that's going to be the last day that I play out here for a living. You know, this is not the be-all, end-all.

This is not the most important thing in my life. And that's why I wrestle with, why is this so important to me? Because, you know, I would much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer. So I just need to clarify up top here that you're about to get an episode that was inspired less by the public vulnerability of Scotty Sheffler, the reigning number one golfer in the world. And more by the fact that the NFL season is almost upon us. And I have been preparing for it. in part, by devouring a new book that was written and reported by my guest today,

Seth Wickersham of ESPN, who happens to understand the most glamorous job in America at this point, better than probably any journalist alive. And so, I think this is a way into it, into American Kings, a biography of the quarterback, which is a delight and as much about not football as it is about football in some ways. Absolutely. As is this email from Tom Brady, which is about how, wait a minute, you can in fact be the greatest quarterback of all time and the greatest dad. And when you read that email from Tom, having covered Tom since how long? 2001.

From the start. Yeah, from the start. When you were like walking across the field with him. We were the same age. We were walking outside of the old stadium and alongside the new one, which was being built. And he said, you know, I hope I get to play in that. If you can believe that. So much has happened since.

So much. So much. Who would ever imagine that Jordan Hudson would be sitting in one of the... Anyway, that's a whole other episode. And that's for later this season, incidentally. But for now, let's go back to the greatest quarterback of all time. When you read that email from Tom, what did you think about his claim that, hold on. This is totally doable.

I thought it was pure Brady. because for a couple of reasons. Number one, about 10 years ago, we sat in his living room, trying to figure out a way to end football in his terms, which meant playing until your 40s, and raising kids in a very unbalanced world to be balanced was like on his mind constantly.

And when, I think if Brady has some repetitive themes in his career, it's that when faced with a choice, he chooses both and tries to say, well, why can't I? And so I think that to be a great quarterback, you have to be able to live in a little bit of a state of delusion. Now, the interesting thing about that, of course,

is that it's very easy to quantify the greatest quarterback ever. It's very difficult to quantify the greatest dad ever. His ex-wife seemed to think the stats on the whole, like being around for the family part of the ledger, not nearly as strong as the greatest of all time. Well, remember, I mean, he leaves New England.

He goes to Tampa, wins the Super Bowl right away. And then on the field after the game, she comes up to him and she says, What more do you have to prove? And what did you say in that moment? What did you say? I just gave her a big hug. I was trying to figure out a way to change the subject really quick. You know, Brady smiles and he kind of giggles his way through it.

and chooses to not answer. And then, of course, he comes back again, ends up retiring for like a month, and then comes back again. And so one of the things I get into in the book is you don't play quarterback, you are one. Whether you're me in high school, in Anchorage, Alaska. Which I do need to talk to you about.

I don't know if we need to really go there. Alaska's Uncle Rico here. But it's your identity. It completely takes over you. And especially, think about someone like him and how long he did it and how well he did it. And so that's not something you just leave. And it's not something that you just part ways with easily. And I asked the question at one point, you know, asking what more do you have to prove as she did? Maybe it wasn't

the right question. Maybe the right question is like, why is quarterback worth it? And this whole thing, like the reason why this is a book that's about everything else as well as the most popular and most important institution remaining in American life, is that a quarterback is a spokesman and a prom king and fighter pilot? Totally. Steve Young and I sat down at one point and we tried to name all of the hats you have to wear from, you know, spokesperson of a billion dollar organization to breathtaking asshole, to amateur psychologist, to biggest cheerleader to, you know, and oh, by the way, you also have to be able to like throw the ball through these windows that nobody else sees, much less can ever take advantage of.

And I think we stopped at like 17 different titles, 17 different hats. I got some more to add. Yeah, I think we still forgot some. Yeah, you're kind of also, yeah, you're part prisoner and part cop. Absolutely. And civic treasure, you know what I mean?

Philanthropists, all these things. Savior and scapegoat. Matne Idol. I mean, it's all of these things. And I think that like quarterback has gotten so big and we can go into all the reasons. reasons from youth culture up until, you know, retired Hall of Famers. But it's gotten so big in American culture that the people that succeed at it,

I think, have the same personality, I don't want to say flaw, but personality trait that, like, politicians have. Yes. That rock stars have, that lead actors have, where there is a hole in your personality that cannot take enough adoration, love, support, and you almost have to build your own ecosystem where that becomes the purpose. Yeah. And, you know, it creates some great quarterbacks, and it creates some really unhealthy

situations that they have to deal with later in life. When I first heard you're writing this book, a biography of the quarterback, I'm like... When I first reached out to you and was like, please buy however many you can. When I flooded Amazon.com with bots on your behalf, I was thinking of myself, this is kind of like writing a book about the concept of the president. I actually thought a lot about that because you see these moments, or at least you used to see them, where all the presidents would get together. And it's like, what do they talk about? They've achieved something. And there must be so much that they can relate to about each other, even if the details are different.

And I thought about it in the same lens that like, especially for the retired Hall of Famers, and I have some moments. And I have some moments in there when they're all around each other. And there's this like throttled, nervous, competitive energy between them. But they know something about American life. They know something about each other. And that is a fascinating and lofty place to be in. And this is a job that you, by the way, report. That's the key of this to me.

This book is reported. It's a zillion interwoven reporting trips. And what you sort of realize, is that no position, no job, is more studied than quarterback. It's even more studied than president, given how many millions of people have fun studying quarterback, cosplaying as quarterback. And yet, still, there is no job more misunderstood,

perhaps even by the people writing newsletters testifying to how much they understand it. Totally. And it's misunderstood even by those who do it. I was at this event two weeks ago out in California. It was a panel with Mina Kimes and Andrew Luck. And Steve Young was giving the intro. And he was talking about coaching his daughter's flag football team. And at some point, they turned to him to coach the quarterbacks.

And like, you need to teach them how to throw. And he stopped. And he goes, well, how do you throw? And he lifts his arm. And you could see his mind went somewhere else right there. Because he was like, I don't know how you throw. I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how to teach it.

And that to me was just fascinating because if there's anybody who kind of can articulate it, it's Steve. Like, Dan Marino can't articulate it. He literally knows no way through life other than being able to throw the ball where he wants, when he wants. I feel like for that reason, though, Marino is just sort of like, I'm kind of jealous of the simplicity of just like, man, it was fun. Absolutely.

And I think that's one of the reasons why people like Elway, Marino, you know, they don't coach because they can't. And here Steve was kind of frozen in front of the entire room with his arm in the air. saying like, I actually don't know how to explain this thing that I know more about than almost anybody on earth. I feel like that's why you as guy who has... As a tour guide. But a tour guide and also a would-be exhibit.

Like you... I mean, this is the thing... I was talking to our friend, your old friend, your really, really, really close friend, Wright Thompson. And I was like, what should I... What should I ask us about? Because, you know, I'm reading the book and the book's... You know, there's a lot here.

And he tells me, I talked to Seth at least once a day, every day for the past 20 plus years. And I had never heard the story in there about what happened to you as a young quarterback. Look, I was a kid. I grew up in, you know, there's a pet theory about quarterbacks that, like, you know, they're compensating for something, which again kind of goes back to that politician, that celebrity type of thing where, you know, it's not just enough to be able to think. throw the ball. And so I had a great loving family, but they're, you know, my parents struggled to make ends meet. They got divorced. And, you know, around the same time as when I just kind of began

to fall in love with this position, we went to go see, I grew up in Alaska. We went to go see the Broncos and the Seahawks. And, you know, I was in the front road during warmups. And watching the ball come out of John Elway's hand was unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. Like, it didn't look like a football. The film on Elway is still. Still in 2025, very silly to see. It's ridiculous. But like just watching it, I had never seen anything like that. And I was like, you know, I want to do that.

I just became obsessed. Like I went to camps up and down the West Coast. I carried footballs around with me everywhere. It became who I was before I was even a quarterback. You were the kid who was inhaling the John Elway instructional video. Yeah, that was, there's not a lot to take from it, you know. But I tried. I mean, I rented that video.

so many times and ones like it. The fundamentals of offensive football, the winning touch from 1987, is an incredible time capsule to be like, what was Seth's childhood like? And suddenly it's... All right, now it's time to throw the football. Where do you throw it?

Who do you throw it to? It all depends. Crucial third down. You need this first down desperately. Go to the hook pattern. Down. Odd. Ready.

Set, go. On the hook route, you know, it's usually 12 to 14 yards deep when we run the hook route, and that's all timed in with the drop. That's why the drops are so important, because you look at the plays in 80% of all routes and passes that quarterbacks make, or timing, timing patterns. I later found out Brady rented the same video

and was obsessed with the same video, so I think he took a little bit more from it than I did. I look that you were... We bonded, yeah. You were Eskimo Film Brothers through the fundamentals of offensive football. But, you know, I became a starting quarterback, and I had some good games, I had some bad games, and, you know, I got a taste of it. Then my drive went in, you know, it just went into overdrive.

I was doing everything I could. All I thought about was it. This is like entering my junior year. And I had my eye on this senior that I wanted to beat out, who ended up playing college football. I mean, I had no chance. But again, you have to be in a little bit of a state of delusion and believe. And, you know, I believed it. And, like, I got broken.

And I got cut from varsity. it was one of the worst, most humiliating moments of my life. I couldn't even process. It was like my little world had just started to separate in ways that I didn't know exactly how to put it back together. And, you know, the coach, I think, saw it. And I think, you know, he... It sounds so, like, just pathetic.

Well, I think... It's so pathetic. That's one of the reasons why I didn't talk about it with Wright. But, you know, the coach sort of said, like, hey, why don't we just move you to receiver and, like, take this weight off of you? And I took him up on it. And it took me years to forgive myself for doing that.

It's like I wanted to be president, not the secretary of agriculture. This is less cool. It's an addictive feeling. Like in my own little way, I got to be the quarterback in the hallways for a period. And so I got a taste of it. And I think that the book isn't about me, thank God. But it's about me wondering what life would have been like. And that's a question that a lot of us might have.

What is it like to be a quarterback, to be the quarterback, to be the one who succeeds and fails on this stage? What does it like to live with it afterwards? What does it like to deal with the pain, emotional and physical? And so I pick characters that basically I thought could illuminate those bigger themes. Yeah, and they connect. I mean, that's the crazy thing about this, is that the story is told through the connective tissue of events that I was glancingly, if not intimately familiar with in terms of the history of. football and America. But for instance, like the very basic question

of like, okay, John Elway, I'm looking at the John Elway film in my mind's eye and I'm like, number seven. Okay, so why did John Elway wear number seven? It's interesting because he wore number 11 in high school. I think when he got to Stanford, I think it was taken. And 12, I think felt like too common, if I remember right.

But there was this guy. You know, Elway was one of the preeminent quarterbacks out of Southern California. You know, him and Warren Moon and, you know, there's a couple others, but Jay Schrader, there's a deep cut. But one of the guys that is a huge figure, not in the history of the NFL exactly,

but in the history of quarterback and what it means and how it evolved into the thing that it is, is this guy named Bob Waterfield. He was the third quarterback inducted in the Hall of Fame. He played in the 1940s for the Rams. He is a big reason why the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles. Yes. And his wife, Jane Russell, is another big reason.

So he was like one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL at the time when football was starting to emerge into the national consciousness. And she was the country's biggest pin-up star. They were like the first power couple in America. I had no idea that Bob Waterfield was a guy who existed until I started reading about him in your book. And I'm like, wait a minute. Okay, so this guy Bob Waterfield exists, goes to UCLA in the 40s. So the 40s, a lot happened in American history and history of Western Civil. And Jane Russell was, quote, the most photographed woman in the world, end quote.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the loveliest Jane of all? Well, yes, you're quite right. Every cinema go would vote for Jane Russell. So welcome to London, Jane. We're very glad to see you. Thank you. I'm very happy to be back in London. And some people know me as Mrs. Waterfield, you know. And they had what seems like the first power couple amalgamated name. Yeah, Russfield. I mean, they started their own production company. I mean, they were... Rustfield. The metaphor of World War II.

And he was a really good-looking guy. I mean, he looked like James Dean before James Dean came along. It is dark-wavy hair. Right. And he told the world that quarterback can get you the girl. and you can have this life. And they had these legendary parties at their house

that overlooked the valley. It was just over the hills. And I mean, all of the luminaries from that era, the people who changed America with black and white pictures and with stories, I mean, they all came there.

And it was like... In the Golden Age of Hollywood. I mean, literally was the time. Absolutely. And then you had the football crew come through. And he was drafted by the Rams. And at the time, they were the Cleveland Rams. He goes and plays his rookie season there.

He went, MVP, rookie of the year, and they win the NFL championship. And after the season, the owner of the Rams, this guy, Dan Reeves, moves the team to L.A. And part of the reason was because he saw their star power. It was a huge, I'm going to go on a tangent here for a second, but it was a huge moment in the idea of the quarterback and football as we know it, because number one, the Rams go to L.A., they become a star-powered team in the franchise. They're also the first pro sports team west of the Mississippi.

They paved the way for the Dodgers. And they're also the, they were, I think, the only sports team to move after they won a championship. They move three weeks later. It's an incredible heat check from the Rams to be like, you know what, this Hollywood thing, we're going to want to get closer to that. Yeah. And so her star takes off, his star takes off. They're followed by, you know, some of the earliest iterations of paparazzi.

By the way, ask permission to take the photo because he had a temper. this huge melding of Hollywood in football. Like Pete Roselle worked for the Rams at the time, and he later said that the highlight of his young life was being invited to their house to one of their parties. Well, the parties, I mean, the people who showed up. Yeah. Like, I mean, it's like, oh, Frank Sinatra.

With all due respect to, like, Tim Tebow and Caleb Williams and all of these college quarterbacks who ran in pretty elite circles, Waterfield, even at UCLA, ran in more elite circles than they did. It was insane. So he goes out there and the Rams become this idea. and they become this vision as a couple. And then back in Cleveland, they have a void to fill.

And what comes next, but the Paul Browns. And Paul Brown, of course, bases his entire methodology on taking control from the field of play, from the players, and transferring it to the coaches. To the point where the name of the team is not coincidentally his last name. Exactly. But Bob Waterfield War Number 7 to bring it full circle. That was one of the, and L.A. later, saw Waterfield's kid at a charity event, and he was like,

your dad paved the way for everybody, and he was part of the reason why I wore number seven. But that image of both this glowing number seven, but also the masculinity embedded in it, part of what I laughed at was, okay, so Bob Waterfield Rams, go to L.A., they leave that void in Cleveland, and guess who is blamed? in Cleveland. Oh, Jane Russell. Of course. Blame the woman.

Blame the, yes. Blame Delilah for a team, a sport that's like we got to get the wadage, the refracted glow of the most famous woman in the world to help our business. And I'm like, then simultaneously listening to Taylor Swift on Travis Kelsey's podcast. Travis Kelsey, high school quarterback. In case anyone was wondering... Oh, fucking course. In case anyone was wondering, you know, why.

It kind of makes sense now, doesn't it? Summer is in full swing and surfside. It's my go-to. They've got a full range of canned iced teas and lemonade with premium vodka. Personally, right now, I'm enjoying the peach flavor. But honestly, they're all great. 100 calories, only 2 grams of sugar. And my favorite part is that there are no bubbles.

Because it's not a seltzer. It's surfside. So find the can with the sunset stripes. wherever you get your drinks must be 21 plus, and please, please drink responsibly. The book doubles, as is clear now, as a social history of a physician. And again, you think about the cafeteria, I think about prom, you think about Congress, all of these places in which ego gets measured, power is apportioned, and people reveal themselves to be savage, even though they're wearing the costume of sophistication. And the family that sits over all of this in modern football, now for decades upon decades, 67 years,

is weirdly successful at managing the ecosystem. How do you begin to explain the future of football, which is Archmanning? Through the lens of the guys who came before him. I mean, there's so many ways to think about this. on a most basic level, why is it that this is the hardest thing to do in American sports, if not global sports, and yet this one family has it figured out? Does that mean that it's actually harder than we think or not as hard? Is this nature or actually nurture? Yes, and it's like one of those fascinating things. And you can make a real case that Arch Manning wasn't born on his

actual birthday in 2005. He was born in 1969 when Archie Manning was a junior and they played the first nationally televised night game in college football history, and they lost Alabama, but he put on a show that started, you know, not only a cultural phenomenon, but maybe a kind of a revolution. He's got some time. He's throwing long. It is completed in Alabama. And Bo Blair pulls him down at the 30. The past play was to tight end Jim pool. And I kept wondering, like, what it was about these guys that lead them to walk into this, walk into a huddle thinking they can do it. And so I tried to kind of use Arch Manning as a lens to analyze the entire Manning family and all of the blessings and curses of that.

But like there was a game that Arch had. He was entering ninth grade. And it was a spring game. And he went down the field and he's in the shotgun. And he looks to his right and he sees this receiver. who's supposed to run a slant, and the cornerback is on him really, really tight. And so it's like everything that the family had helped build

for the quarterback position and football and that he learned both overtly at times and through osmosis came together in this little moment for a 13 or 14-year-old. And he does a signal, a la Uncle Peyton, signaling the receiver to switch from a slant to a slant, go and he throws a touchdown pass. And up in the stands, his dad, Cooper Manning, was with his friend Richard Montgomery, and they just looked at each other like, oh, shit, it's on.

It's starting. And like, it's insane to think about the amount of pressure that Arch Manning has chosen to put on himself in this space because nothing he ever does is viewed within the lens of anything being normal or realistic. It's like any career that doesn't end with him being a Heisman finalist, being the first pick in the draft, and having a great NFL career. But that's kind of where we're at. And he embraced that. Well, the comedy of that is that, like, of course, he is the son of Cooper. He's the son of the Manning, who did, much to the shame of Seth Wickersham's own experience, have to play receiver. Why? Why do you think that worked out?

that way. It's so interesting. He was a terrific athlete, and that's just the place that he gravitated towards. And, you know, Peyton in a lot of ways is like the least natural athlete out of that family. Archie was a terrific scrambler. Cooper became a division one receiver before he had to quit football. And Eli was a really good athlete. Peyton in some ways had to put quarterback, you know, take it away from the legs and put it almost all in the mind to succeed. Oh, him at the line of scrimmage was truly like... Louisville Soul Train.

Louisville Soul Train. They're purple, purple, Buddha Raiders. It's not about trickery. Purple, Buddha Raiders! But it does take constant communication, because when you do change a pass play to a run, a run play to a pass play, it's not easy as just, hey, let's throw it.

It's I say something, and then you tell the offensive line, They have an entirely different language that really nobody else understands. Was he the one who mastered that more than anybody, would you say? I mean, I forget the writer who said this, but people had hips before Elvis too, right? I think it was Jim Murray who said that.

But Peyton, like, he changed football forever with things that he did. And, you know, here comes Arch, his nephew. And even though Peyton has an internal governing system that tells him, you know, hey, check yourself here, you know, because he knows what this world, this world that his nephew might be getting into. It's like even he couldn't help it. And like, you know, Arch flew to Denver at one point. And they went through a series of drills, not only the drills that Peyton had learned that worked over the years, but they had secret footage

of Tom Brady's practices from Clyde Christensen, who was a coach at the box and a friend of the Mannings, he coached Peyton too. And so it was like, Arch was becoming the receptacle, of these two incredibly high-level and astute philosophies on quarterbacking. And he was a kid. This is like one of those Jurassic Park sequels where you're like, you made a new dinosaur out of two different dinosaurs? Exactly. And yet it worked.

And then Arch returns to Newman, which is like a very small school outside of New Orleans. Michael Lewis went there. It's known for creating some of the most famous, like, hedge fund people that exist and the mannings. So the whole like inheritance that is carried down, not merely from Archie Manning, but from before Archie Banning, all the way to Bob Waterfield,

when it's that lineage. And there's a choice. How do we handle this young prospect with the most expectation that any quarterback you could argue has ever had? What do they do, given all of the resources now available to them over, yeah, three generations,

four generations now of Mannings. I thought they did two really fascinating things. Like, number one, no social media. So Arch was not on social media. And the second thing they did was Cooper met with the head coach of Newman at the time. This guy Nelson Stewart, he was a guard for Peyton Manning's team. Really good guy. He now coaches at this high school in Atlanta.

And Cooper says, I want this to be a 1975 recruitment. And Nelson's like, wait, what? And he goes, I want you to run point. I want you to be the bodyguard, the lead blocker, the filter, the organizer, everything, and we're not taking any offers. And he was like, wait a second, what, we're not doing offers? And he goes, no, I mean, we'll make a choice. They didn't want Arch to have to be on social media like every other quarterback, you know,

talking about how thrilled and humbled they were to receive a scholarship offer from Ole Miss. as a 13-year-old, whatever it might be. Part of, again, just the farce of how do you recruit this unrecruitable player is that it didn't stop people from trying. Absolutely. And they tried. You know, the coaches tried. I mean, Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, all these guys, it got, Nick Saban, even, you know,

it got so competitive and so ruthlessly intense between them as they were trying to get Arch. They did all kinds of things. Like, the coaches would show up at East Adorn. Newman, even though they couldn't talk to him. And Nelson Stewart ended up just like hanging out with these guys because they had nowhere to go. And Nelson teaches at Newman, but he also, like, all the teachers rotate around the campus. And it's K through 12. Nelson Stewart would go, would be on preschool duty where he have to push kids on the swings and stuff. And the coaches with, you know, their lips pregnant with dip would go push kids on the swings too, just trying to

like pass time until football practice came along. There was a moment. There's a metaphor there that I, like, speaks for itself already, but... There was, there was, you know, a moment when Nick Saban came, and all of the Nick Saban assistants call him daddy, which is, maybe we don't need to go there this episode. You know, Nick Saban wanted Arch, and maybe if he had gotten him, he'd still be coaching, but he didn't want to appear to want Arch. Like, he kind of, like, wanted his presence to be enough. And, you know, meanwhile, Pete Golding, who's, like, one of his assistant coaches, is the one tasked with Landing Arch. and it's getting down to the wire where Arch has got to make a decision and they're doing a Zoom.

And nobody, not even the family members, knew where Arch wanted to go or what his preferences were. Like some of the family thought that Georgia was a good fit because he'd be coached hard. You know, other people thought that Alabama would be good because he could be coached by daddy. Like, who better to prepare you for the NFL? Texas was kept lingering. And, you know, everyone wonders, like, what is a modern recruit? like for a guy like him. And it got so tight that Pete Golding was on a call with Arch Cooper and Nelson Stewart, a Zoom. And, you know, people know that Steve Sarkesian, the coach of University of Texas,

has battled alcoholism. It's public record. It almost cost him his career. Famously. He managed to find a way through it and he's built a terrific career. And stuff like that ends up being fair game. Oh, and the negative recruiting of all of us. Exactly. And, and, And so Pete, whose friends with Sark says on this call, he says, I love Sark. He's my best friend. And then he's like, oh, my God, do I go there? And he did. He goes, you know, I hope he can stay sober.

And then after the call, like, Nelson Stewart called him. And he was like, Pete, that is f***ed up. And, you know, Golding knew it was f***ed up. But, like, he had no choice because, you know, he said, he goes, daddy's on me. And yet, I think Arch was able to go through life with, a semblance of a normal high school experience and not lose his love of the game because the mannings were able to put this cocoon around him. It's a really fascinating, like, kind of tension in push and pull because in one sense, there was an entire existence of

Archmanning that he didn't need to do anything for it to exist. He almost became iconic as a child, as he's trying to learn his way through the world. And yet there's this other existence that's very small where he sits next to the freshman before games so we can get to know them. And he goes to class. And he says hi to coaches, but he doesn't have to, you know, do anything more. He just simply has to like be. So I think it worked. I mean, we'll see, you know, I don't, there's no predictive value in it in terms of him

as a player, but that's a whole other question. But in terms of raising a quasi-balanced human being in a really unbalanced space, I think that they did a pretty good job of it. What do you see when you see him now at Texas, when you're like sort of paying attention from afar? And again, he's backing up Quinn Ewers, which is, did that feel? I thought that was one of the most insightful experiences if you're looking at like why Arch might make it and live up to this. And the fact that he didn't leave. Like going back to Tom Brady, I mean, he loves writing about his mission experience.

And like everyone's like, oh, poor Tom Brady started as a seventh stringer. And then by the time he got the starting job. he had to fight for it again and he kept getting pulled and Brady kind of flips it in a way that even like his family members can't and he's like thank god that happened to me because I came into the NFL ready to rock and I had unbreakable self-confidence and I knew I could do this because of what I had gone through and so many of these guys don't have that you know in the book like Sean Payton is talking about scouting Caleb Williams and one of the things that he worries him is like you know this guy's never been broken. You know, it's an existential worry. And with Arch, in the era of the portal, think about the number of coaches texting saying, like, he'll get on the field next Saturday for us, the fact that he stuck it out at Texas. At a time at which there has never been more power for a prospect into man to make a choice that makes them, even in the mind of the coaches, at least, more powerful than that. Absolutely. And he picked Texas for a couple of reasons. Like, number one,

I think he liked that Sarkesian was the head coach and play caller. So he knew that the offensive coordinator wasn't going to leave. Number two, he liked that Austin was a huge town and that he could probably blend in better than like Oxford, Mississippi, for instance. The third reason is that he wanted to be part of a team that was going to take the next step. And I think he never lost focus of that. And I think that that to me is really, really interesting because, again, you know, Quinn Ewers is the Tom Brady in that situation and Archbanning is the Tom Brady

in that situation. Like, nobody would have blamed him if he had left Texas. It's like either this is disastrous or you're one of the greatest of all time. It's just so unfair. And yet he knew it. You know, he knew it from the moment he decided to do this that he was entering into something different.

And I should clarify that, like, my emotional reaction to that binary is not, man, I really feel sorry for Arch Manning, although I think that in the movie of his life, it's okay for the audience to have that sort of like compulsion. My emotional reaction is, this is extreme in a way that tests something that is insanely difficult to scout, which is, as you say, who really gets off when that spotlight becomes viscerally uncomfortable? Like who, we, again, Bob Waterfield in the Golden Age of Hollywood, proved that that was a very important question. If not requirement.

And now when it comes to like, so why are the mannings good at this? What I'm led now in this conversation to wonder about is maybe it's because there is some kind of preparation, there is some kind of perspective on what it's like to really enjoy that and not be afraid of it. And not let it burn you out or get the best of you. The mannings are not perfect people. No. But in the decades of intense scrutiny that, you know, is very singular to them to say nothing of the intense scrutiny of being a quarterback and just getting the job done. I mean, they've done a phenomenally good job of managing it. It doesn't mean that it's easy.

I mean, Eli Manning saw a therapist with the Giants. And when he started to see the therapist, the main thing from an organizational standpoint is they didn't want it to get out. You know, they didn't want the world to know that their quarterback was seeing a therapist. That Eli Manning's internal monologue got sad sometimes. Exactly. Whereas, like, Tom Brady, him seeing a therapist at Michigan is an essential part of his story that he loves talking about. And, you know, they didn't, they were worried about what would happen in, like, the New York press and the media market if that got out. But, like, you know, they figured out a way to do it.

And I think that that's fascinating. And when Arch asks his uncles for help, he tends to ask Peyton the football questions. And then Peyton leaves him like a seven-minute voice message. Peyton loves the voice message or the voice memo. And then he realizes he forgot a couple details. So he leaves a couple more. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then when he calls Eli, it tends to be about how do you handle fame? How do you handle scrutiny? And, you know, Eli gives him some advice. I mean, one of the things is never be photographed drinking. like with alcohol because if you blink when the picture is getting taken that will live forever on the internet

and it'll be like, you know, Eli Manning was smashed. Yeah, I was going to say, Eli Manning has one lesson. Don't be an Eli Manning meme. Exactly. I know. But like, you know,

Eli is really good at thinking about how to not make things easy for the outside forces that feed on you. And, you know, so in a weird way, It's like you see Arch handling this stuff and you're like, okay, I get it now. I get why he's doing all right right now. It reminds me, too, though, that like something that the social media, the era in which there

has never been more coaching of quarterbacks, there's never been more granular training, there's never been more audience building at an earlier age. It does remind me that, like, broadly speaking, we are raising this generation of kids to have the particular kink of attention. Oh, my gosh. On paper, everybody wants it. But what I'm realizing is that, like, the question is not do you want the attention? The question is, when you get the attention, are you good enough to survive the attention?

Yeah. And, I mean, that's the question now. And, you know, there's a way to, like, John Elway was a fascinating character for me because he was number, first guy to ever be number one out of high school, first pick in the draft, first ballot hall of famer. He survived that. So that does something to you. You have to hardwire yourself to do it, and then you have to deal with what it meant to be John Elway on the other end. But now it's like there's a way to be a quarterback. There are these camps. You have to have arm care, a throwing specialist, media training, PT. There's all of these things that you need to do now. And there's all of these circuits from seven-on-seven tournaments to quarterback showcases. And when I was at Elite 11, which joins the Manning Passing Academy as the two preeminent ones,

you know, this guy was telling me, he's like, we're just raising little assholes here. We're breeding little assholes. And you see it and you're like, oh my God, he's right. Yes, imagine a world in which the dream. And it's seemingly never been more resonant or popular. The dream is to be the biggest star in the most popular, last remaining, as we say all the time, last remaining monoculture left in American life, what's it like to want to say at the very young age,

I want to run for that office. Yeah. And on the flip side of that, of course, is the quarterback dad. Who often sees his role as being the one who's not only the, you know, strategist for this quarterback, but also, like, their biggest critic. Yes. Like, you know, the drive home has to be hard because that will prepare him for what's coming. And so that dynamic gets really tricky and interesting and just imagine what it's like for a teenager.

When I was at Elite 11, it had just ended. It was like three days. And there was this kid I was falling around in the book named Colin Hurley. And Hurley ended up going to LSU at age 16. He was just hell-bent on being the youngest to do everything. And as you know, there's a lot of benefit for being that precocious and there's also a lot of worry. because no matter what, there's a part of growing up you cannot accelerate.

Yeah. And he enters LSU at age 16. He's a terrific player. Ends of getting up to second string. At that point, he was 17 years old. And when we were leaving Elite 11, though, he was walking off with his dad and me, and then we looked over our shoulders,

and one of the quarterbacks, I won't say who, I thought about naming him, but I don't want to embarrass him. because he's how old? Well, he was a teenager at the time. But, like, his dad was just ripping into him for his performance at Elite 11 in front of everybody. They weren't even off the field.

They were still on the field in Southern California. And his dad is literally saying, what the fuck were you doing out there? And Colin kind of waited. Then the dad stalked off. Colin kind of waited. And Colin, who has a loving but intense dad also, walked over to the kid and just gave him a hug.

Because it was like, in that moment, And even though Colin Hurley couldn't even drive a car, he kind of knew something about what that kid was going through. And he knew that even though they're competitors, they're kind of blood brothers in a way that they're going through this really strange circuit and ringer together. And they needed to be there for one another. And so then you have Colin, who of course goes off to LSU at such a young age, performs really well. I had written a draft of the book. And in January, I was out to ease. I was diving into a burrito

and a friend of mine text me and he goes, hey, is Colin Hurley still one of the main characters in your book? And I thought the last scene with Colin Hurley in the book was going to be his parents dropping him off

at the dorm room at age 16. And I was like, yeah. And he sends me a tweet and it's like LSU freshman quarterback in critical condition after a car accident. And I was like, what? And he had driven his car.

A car's dad didn't even want him to have. But again, you have NIL money, you have freedom, you have all of these things. He drove it into a truck. tree at about 3 a.m. I flew down to Baton Rouge that night, spent a couple days with him in the ICU, and then watched him kind of like try to put his life back together. But that's part of this life. There's a direct line between what happened there and the life that he had lived before that

and the situation that he found himself in. And like I said, there's a lot of benefit to the exposure that a lot of these young quarterbacks get, Instagram quarterbacks, but it is a danger dangerous path. And, you know, for better or for worse, the dad ends up being the guy who kind of tries to steer them through that. And that's a tricky, tricky thing. I'm imagining, like, the reality of, like, here is this camp full of little assholes. And as the saying goes, behind every little asshole is a big asshole. Well, I think that, like, Andrew Luck has talked a lot about this. Our friend Alex Smith has talked a lot about this. Is it like, you know, when you talk to Alex Smith about his first years in the NFL and what he lacked. He doesn't say I lacked

schematic innovators, my offensive coordinator. I lacked playmakers on the perimeter. He says, I didn't have a good sense of self. And I think that's a fascinating thing to say. Oh, Alex's whole legend to me, beyond the recovery from physical destruction and even recovery from psychological destruction is that he is truly emotionally intelligent. He is. And again, the ultimate compliment you can pay a person in a world of extremity

in a profession incentivizing extremity is... He's pretty normal. He is. And Andrew Luck saw who he needed to be as a quarterback and didn't like that guy. I mean, and so I think that, like, to be a quarterback in the NFL, and now it drips down as we talk about little assholes.

And there's a lot of assholes around them too, by the way. I've noticed. But you cannot walk on the field with doubt. And so you have to do something to get your mind into a place where you're not feeling worried when you're entering, when you're walking out on the field. And like, that means you have to be at the center of this ecosystem that you create, where you're in.

intentionally isolated and detached and set apart. It means that you have to be incredibly selfish, not only to your family members, but oftentimes to people depending on you. Like, you can't, you have to almost become like a little bit of a sociopath. Like Joe Burrow talked me through what it takes for him to get to a mental place where he can be on the field without doubt. And I realized as he talked to.

about it and it's really kind of excruciated. What did he describe? He transports himself to a place where he's not only feeling no doubt. It's like he doesn't feel anything. And quarterback is also a job where there's a tremendous amount of guilt. You're respected to amass the responsibilities and know everything that's going on. And Burrow, I think one of the most fascinating things about him is that he does the opposite, where if he throws an intercept.

because the receiver wasn't where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there, he feels no guilt. And that's really fascinating because it's one of those things that's easy to say, but it's really hard to live. And I think that there's so much pressure that comes with this position and so many factors that go into it that for him to survive, he needs to think so ruthlessly about only his thing, that he cannot worry about anybody else.

and he actually lives that out. Like coaches for the longest time never talked to burrow on the sideline because it was pointless. Oh, it has that. The whole thing, the legend of him has been like he has the vibe of somebody who's throwing a no-hitter. Mm-hmm.

Insofar as do not talk to him while he's throwing the ball. And now what I'm realizing, and this is where I wanted to go, actually, towards the end here is this notion of here you have a position that is the most famous embodiment of the great man.

theory of America. Totally. And that job, perhaps perfect to that idea, is of course entirely dependent on the people around them to complete a zillion different transactions to take the responsibility that they throw to them and to catch it and to get their feet in bounds or to block for them so they can make that throw. And so you have this just like mind fucking again. of I need to have less empathy for the people around me

to protect my ability to be great, which relies on their ability to make me look as great as I've dreamed since I was seven years old. And let's go back to Brady for a second, because here you have someone who fell asleep before his first Super Bowl, took a nap in the locker room, because he was so innocent that like the consequences

of a loss didn't bother him. And then you have him later in life in his 40s. Unquestionably the most accomplished quarterback ever, maybe the greatest football player ever, found the people around him who would support his crazy dreams to play to high level until his mid-forties like Alex Guerrero. Yes. People who said yes when everybody else was saying no,

surrounded himself with those people. And yet, the night before he, played in his final Super Bowl for the Patriots when they played the Rams, I mean, he was sleepless. He had to write himself affirmations in his playbook to remind himself, you're Tom Fri-N Brady, you know, water their seeds of doubt. You live for these moments. Like, think about that. Like that to me, I know I'm going back to this a lot, but it's like that's why the pressure and the external components of it all are such huge, huge forces in who can make it and who cannot in this. Because even the great Tom Brady had to figure out a way so that when he entered the football field on Super Bowl Sunday, having authored some of the greatest comebacks in NFL history against the Los Angeles Rams. You know, I think everyone knew the Patriots are going to win that game.

But against the team birthed by Russ Field. Exactly. He had to figure out a way so that when he walked on that field, he felt absolutely bulletproof. and, you know, that mental exercise and the ruthlessness that it takes to do it is so fascinating and so essential. And, you know, you don't just walk away from that. It reminds me to answer the question maybe we started this whole thing with, the reason why he thinks you can be both the greatest dad in the world and the greatest quarterback is because the thing that all of these motherfuckers really need in the end to function, even vaguely, normally is delusion. And the ability to believe that something like that's attainable.

And with so many of my main characters, I try to introduce them at the moment that they were feeling the most doubt and how they dealt with it at that moment. You know, and most of the time, they're sophomores in high school, which coincidentally is, you know, a lot of the time that I felt a lot of doubt. It's that primal age where, like, if John Elway didn't pull off this comeback, his first one at Granada Hills hide, does anything? happen after that. You know, those moments are so precious because it gives them a chance to have a narrative that they can tell themselves for the rest of their career. But at some point, you have to

separate from it. And Steve Young, this is like this beautiful moment, Steve was told to run away from his career. And he kind of did. You know, he was a broadcaster in ESPN, but he went into a different field and he did very, very well at it. And he went back to BYU. Um, two years ago for an alumni weekend. And someone stopped him. They're like, hey, you know, there's an alumni football game tonight. You're going to play, right? Steve's like, no, I am not.

Like, that's the quickest way to, like, humiliate myself. But he also, he reconsidered it because it was like, look, it's a football field. There's people in the stands. It's a Friday night. There are lights on. All of this stuff is so precious. And he was like, well, screw it. I'm going to give it a shot.

And so he goes out there. He's in his early 60s. he's playing with guys who are half of his age and in some cases less than half of his age throws an interception early because of course but then gets the ball late and they go down the field and he calls this play that's one of the plays

that he ran for his daughter's flagged football team called Shake based on the Taylor Swift song and it all goes back to Taylor Swift and he drops back and there's this receiver crossing from the right to the left and he throws the guy which is a beautiful pass with inches to spare into a window that nobody else saw.

And everybody lifts him up on their shoulder. It was like he won the Super Bowl all over again. I mean, he was like, he was given a moment to be the center of that and to do that particular thing that's just so rare and that doesn't come in any other way. That night he's in bed on his phone and someone sends him a clip of the play. Like somebody had videotaped him from behind. And he sees himself dropping back, looking at the,

the defense, looks at his feet, looks at his release. And everything, he said to me, it was like, it was a reminder of what's in me. And even if it was buried, it was still in him. And he watched it like 15 times. And I was like, Steve, we are all Uncle Rico's. That is the most relatable part of this entire book, is that even Steve Young, he just needs to be reminded. That's why this thing is like mythical and magical and mystical and mystical and ridiculous.

And really, truly ridiculous. Seth Wickersham, although you never became the asshole that you dreamed of being, I am glad that you manage to surround yourself with them in, yeah, really good book. I managed to fool you. Thank you so much, man. Great to see you. Pabotore finds out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.