The Crying Game: A Scientific Voyage into the Tear Ducts of Caleb Williams and Bill Belichick

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 4 He was crying before we left the tunnel, a half-empty Cleveland Browns guaranteed win.

Speaker 5 Right after this ad.

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Speaker 18 So, Dave Fleming, I am not proud of what I'm about to tell you, but I am not a crier.

Speaker 20 I grew up Roman Catholic, all boys education.

Speaker 3 I walk around and my tear ducts, my soul is in a state of clench.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 17 Wait, what's the last time?

Speaker 2 What's the sort of thing that triggers you into shedding tears?

Speaker 22 I have

Speaker 22 personal things that I've gone through, but I think it's trained me to, um, I'm comfortable with crying. I, there was the Netflix, the, it was recently, that was called One Day.

Speaker 7 Imagine one selected day struck out of your life

Speaker 7 and think how different its course would have been.

Speaker 22 This couple that they meet each other, they're soulmates, they meet each other in college, but they keep missing each other.

Speaker 22 And it's one day every year for their entire relationship until they finally

Speaker 22 get together and then tragedy ensues.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 I have not seen it, admittedly.

Speaker 28 But I have been thinking about

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 26 And the number one pick in the NFL draft this year is going to be this University of Southern California student named Caleb Williams.

Speaker 23 If you watch tape of Caleb Williams, what you will see pretty immediately is that he can run and throw like Patrick Mahomes.

Speaker 11 And he can also do that thing that quarterbacks do where he brings plays back from the dead.

Speaker 31 Williams has time against the four-man rush, backpedaling, scanning, now running out of time, circling back.

Speaker 32 Jointstick on the move again.

Speaker 4 Are you kidding me? Caleb Williams dancing, cutting, mesmerizing run by the cornerback finally dragged down at the 20. It's a highlight reel tonight.

Speaker 28 One of the biggest problems with Caleb Williams, it turns out, was also captured on video. And this was right after USC lost to University of Washington last fall.

Speaker 28 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 office bullshit from miles away, to help me report this story.

Speaker 28 because one of the biggest problems with Caleb Williams is this clip of Caleb Williams crying.

Speaker 32 Caleb Williams

Speaker 33 jumping up and

Speaker 32 laying in the arms of family there.

Speaker 17 Tough night.

Speaker 17 Battle.

Speaker 32 Sure did.

Speaker 32 He knows the reality of what a third loss means. That's tough.
And as brilliant as his two years will be in LA, it's not going to result in a Pac-12 championship.

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 33 Played well.

Speaker 33 Led his team.

Speaker 33 Did all he could. Just came up a bit short.
This is part of the game.

Speaker 36 The announcers there, I would characterize their tone as uncomfortably polite.

Speaker 5 What did you see there?

Speaker 18 Spell it out for us.

Speaker 22 When he starts heaving, when he's, it's the full-body convulsion crying in his mom's arms.

Speaker 37 He's jumped into the stands after the game.

Speaker 22 Right. Watching it now, I'm not proud of it.

Speaker 22 And I think you can be supportive of men showing their emotions in any way they want.

Speaker 17 But that still left me feeling a little weird.

Speaker 37 Yes. So the context here is it's November 4th, 2023.

Speaker 15 This is last season.

Speaker 9 USC has just lost to Washington.

Speaker 11 52 to 42.

Speaker 37 USC is now 7-3 for the season here.

Speaker 22 And Kale Williams has jumped into the stands.

Speaker 18 And in the first row, there are his parents.

Speaker 39 And he is being, I would say like just visually being cradled, right? I mean, that's not an exaggeration.

Speaker 10 No, no, no, no. And they have to, his mom is holding him.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 22 Well, it's almost, so she understands too that this is sort of uncomfortable or strange and is trying to protect him by covering.

Speaker 22 That was really telling too, that the mom understood how good field awareness. Yeah, she had very good vision there.

Speaker 22 And then he just sort of let go.

Speaker 23 It felt like a nativity scene, a nativity scene come to life in the stains of a college football game.

Speaker 22 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...

Speaker 1 100% not totally in tune with

Speaker 20 my real emotions.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 13 What did the scout tell you that you can report?

Speaker 20 I hated it.

Speaker 22 Hated it. He would scare the sh 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.

Speaker 22 You just lost a game in the middle of your f ⁇ ing 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.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 Look, I don't know him from Adam. I do not know him.
But to me, that looked weak as shit, really fragile.

Speaker 5 And so this is part of

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 It's telling that like NFL scouts feel this, random bloggers feel this, talking heads feel this.

Speaker 17 We have never seen this.

Speaker 41 It just looked like he was in a fetal position while he was on the wall.

Speaker 41 All it took was his mom putting her arm under his legs and she's like literally holding her child like a baby.

Speaker 11 Definitely one of the weakest moves, if not the weakest move, I've ever seen by an athlete.

Speaker 10 12-year-old just struck out for the first time in Little League type sh. But it's like, man, it kind of keeps me from wanting to hang out with him, to be honest.

Speaker 20 Okay, yeah, I'm not hanging out with the dude who paints his nails.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 42 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.

Speaker 20 Gronk feels this for the record here.

Speaker 44 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?

Speaker 44 But then at the same time, I'm like, maybe he's a mama boy.

Speaker 22 I don't normally take my emotional cues from Rob Grakowski, but in this case, I think a lot of us felt the same way. It's like we were not sure how to process this.

Speaker 37 Yeah, but I feel like Gronk is probably on some level taking his cues from the guy he played for, right?

Speaker 11 The Hall of Famer, Bill Belichick, the most emotionally withholding dad in the history of America, I would argue, is that dude.

Speaker 41 This is because this organization hasn't had these sort of issues in the past.

Speaker 41 Yeah, but we're on to Cincinnati.

Speaker 41 Phil, do you think you mentioned Tom's age at the draft?

Speaker 41 We're on to Cincinnati.

Speaker 41 Well, do you think having a 37-year-old? We're on to Cincinnati.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 13 So we have to get to that,

Speaker 14 that investigation.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 22 Get your tissues ready, Pablo.

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Speaker 5 This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Speaker 11 Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

Speaker 10 So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Speaker 10 Learn more at remymartin.com.

Speaker 16 Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champion, African Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design. Please drink responsibly.

Speaker 28 The simple act of crying has confused scientists for centuries.

Speaker 28 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 to the University of Washington.

Speaker 28 All of that is unique to the human condition.

Speaker 8 And no less an authority than than Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, wrote a seminal text in 1872 that was titled The Emotional Expression of Man and Animals.

Speaker 28 And Darwin could not think of a single logical evolutionary reason why human faces would involuntarily leak this salty water at emotional moments.

Speaker 40 Charles Darwin actually declared weeping to be, quote, purposeless, end quote,

Speaker 28 which makes him not totally unlike that anonymous NFL scout that got interviewed by Dave Fleming.

Speaker 5 I want people not watching on YouTube or the DraftKings Network to know that you've made a mess of my desk.

Speaker 2 You have a sheaf of papers here full of research and scientific literature.

Speaker 22 This is edited down, too.

Speaker 17 I could have gotten it all the way over there, too.

Speaker 19 The basic question that I needed help with was, why do we cry at all?

Speaker 23 And so who answered that question for you?

Speaker 22 We went to a uh a renowned uh psychiatrist and professor at the university of pittsburgh her name is lauren bilzma i was looking through some of the articles and things you sent me and just

Speaker 48 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

Speaker 22 She has studied crying probably more than anyone else in the United States.

Speaker 48 It is kind of surprising that given how important and ubiquitous a phenomenon that crying is like pretty much everyone has cried at some point in their life.

Speaker 48 It is surprising there isn't more research on it.

Speaker 48 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 it.

Speaker 22 I wonder if you get tired of hearing that Darwin's,

Speaker 22 he was so critical of it. Why do you think that?

Speaker 48 Well, he wasn't, he just didn't know. Like he couldn't find the reason that people cry.

Speaker 48 So he concluded that tears didn't serve any purpose, that it was just sort of an incidental, purposeless secretion of tears, that it didn't really have any function.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 22 She studied the psychophysiology behind crying.

Speaker 48 Evolutionary theories suggest that the reason we evolved tears was to elicit help from others, starting with when we're babies and we're eliciting help from our mother or other caregivers.

Speaker 48 And then as we get older, it becomes kind of repurposed to getting help from others in our social environment.

Speaker 22 She told me it's based on 4 million years of evolution.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's not great for Caleb Williams' scouting group board.

Speaker 30 It's, oh, it's fine.

Speaker 20 He's just like 4 million years worth of babies crying for their mom.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 It's weird that he's crying after a meaningless loss, but it's even, it disturbs us. If he's gonna cry, right, you should be crying with your teammates.
Right.

Speaker 23 We're your family now.

Speaker 10 Exactly.

Speaker 2 We're your football family.

Speaker 37 That's supposed to matter the most in the context of this game.

Speaker 22 And it's immediately then they flip that to what's wrong with this guy that he didn't cry in his lineman's arms. Why did he go fetal position with his mommy instead of his teammates?

Speaker 5 It's about who you look to for help.

Speaker 22 Did you watch the Caleb Williams clip?

Speaker 48 Yeah, yeah, I did look at that one just before.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 48 Like it did seem like he lost more control than we typically see. Some people might turn to their teammates when they're crying.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 22 And I think maybe for the first time in my entire career, the scouts lined up with the science.

Speaker 2 But in terms of why this is really happening like biologically inside of Caleb Williams.

Speaker 37 What are we even able to say about that?

Speaker 23 Like, why is he doing this?

Speaker 5 Why can't he control himself?

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 48 There is some evidence that crying, when it 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, where your heart's like beating faster, you're breathing faster, that sort of thing.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 22 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,

Speaker 22 it short-circuited on him. I mean, how do you, if you're a scout and this, this bullshit is what we hear all the time about, we want guys who love the game.

Speaker 20 Yeah, you have that dog in you.

Speaker 17 Yeah, we just want guys who live, breathe.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 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

Speaker 17 an evaluator should be worried about?

Speaker 48 I think we'd only really, really worried if it was impacting their functioning.

Speaker 48 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,

Speaker 48 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

Speaker 48 he clearly had really intense feelings on that moment.

Speaker 48 If someone were to say, like, 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 a you know a stream reaction but yeah i find it interesting right that fans are the fans who like

Speaker 22 trash their tv and throw it out the window are like oh caleb williams lost do people really do that

Speaker 48 You know, I'd be more concerned about the people who threw their TVs out of the window than him crying if i were 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

Speaker 22 oh and by the way we've already reserved a spot in her crying lab for you later amazing

Speaker 15 so but i the person i actually want to put into that crying lab though is the person you mentioned before like bill balichek 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.

Speaker 45 But I also can't imagine Bill Balichek actually crying, dude.

Speaker 22 So, in February of 2008, I'm at the Super Bowl where the Patriots, they're 18 and 0, they blow their chance at literally immortality.

Speaker 14 Yes, to the Giants the first time.

Speaker 49 Brady steps up,

Speaker 17 throws,

Speaker 49 downfield broken up.

Speaker 49 Two seconds left as the Giants take over.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 8 Wait, okay.

Speaker 11 So what did you see, Phlem?

Speaker 22 Well, that's a good question because

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 Belichick was, and it's important for what we're doing, our study on Caleb. We need to know if the Garth Vader of the NFL cried, then it's okay for everybody to cry.

Speaker 23 If his comp is Bill Belichick, on some level,

Speaker 23 this is news we could use.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 17 He wrote the book

Speaker 10 on the Patriots.

Speaker 22 Yeah. Knows and has spoken to probably more than anyone.
And we were at that game together. We were in the locker room together.

Speaker 22 And then basically, after debating this back and forth, what we were agreed upon was

Speaker 22 we can confirm moisture around the eyes is as far as we could go.

Speaker 36 So the question of is moisture tears?

Speaker 5 Sometimes on the show, we put a lot of work into stupid things.

Speaker 14 We take stupid things very seriously.

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 37 I just want people to understand how much labor 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?

Speaker 22 Dozens. So I've returned from this particular rabbit hole.

Speaker 17 It's another piece of paper with just many names written on it. Yes, I have my homework assignment finished, Pablo.

Speaker 22 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?

Speaker 22 I mean, it got to that point.

Speaker 22 And the first person that I asked that to was Roosevelt Colvin, who was a linebacker, old school linebacker on the Patriots.

Speaker 10 On that team.

Speaker 22 Yes. And he responded something like, LOL, 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.

Speaker 22 We've got Chad Finn, who is a reporter in Boston. We've got Stacey James, the longtime PR VP at the Patriots.

Speaker 34 What did the PR person say, the official mouthpiece of Belichick Once Upon a Time?

Speaker 22 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, Bill's, I've never seen Bill cry.

Speaker 22 Even when Bill told the team that his father had died, the players cried and the players got emotional, but Bill didn't.

Speaker 14 Classic, classic Belichick.

Speaker 22 Yeah. I reached out to a longtime associate and close friend of Bill Belichick's who confirmed immediately, never seen Bill cry.

Speaker 22 I will also point out another reporter replied, are you kidding me? Sociopaths don't cry.

Speaker 30 Well, it got to the point where I had to DM.

Speaker 14 I was like, all right, Teddy Bruski.

Speaker 20 Did you ever see Belichick cry?

Speaker 18 And he said, can't say I recall BB shedding tears over the game, period, like immediately.

Speaker 10 Like no.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 22 So

Speaker 17 the closest we got was moisture around the eyes.

Speaker 22 I also talked to Ian O'Connor, who wrote 500 pages.

Speaker 17 Another book.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 They both sent me further down this stupid rabbit hole, Pablo.

Speaker 19 This is my life now.

Speaker 22 It is.

Speaker 22 By recommending, they said, oh, check out the 30 for 30 called Two Bills.

Speaker 23 Yeah, this is the Bill Parcels, Bill Belichick dock they made.

Speaker 22 Right. And it's basically a scene of him in the

Speaker 22 depths of old Giants Stadium cinder block offices where he used to grind through tape when he was a nobody with the Giants.

Speaker 31 You think about that and who you were back then.

Speaker 9 You have a different perspective on it

Speaker 26 20 years later.

Speaker 51 Do it! I probably wouldn't

Speaker 51 have been out like this

Speaker 52 that I'd be standing here, you know, like this.

Speaker 52 You know, I was just trying to

Speaker 52 establish my coaching career,

Speaker 51 be a good coach,

Speaker 52 win some games,

Speaker 51 and um

Speaker 51 man, we want a lot of them here.

Speaker 27 This is is a great.

Speaker 17 Is this history?

Speaker 52 It's a great organization.

Speaker 22 Do it.

Speaker 17 Come on. Yeah.

Speaker 52 It's hard not to get choked up about it.

Speaker 52 Damn, I spent a lot of hours on that.

Speaker 51 Unclench.

Speaker 17 Cry, you bastard. Unclench the fist around.
Saturday morning.

Speaker 52 Ride the bike, go through three or four games of the next team we are going to play.

Speaker 52 It's a lot of

Speaker 52 hours here.

Speaker 17 Come on.

Speaker 37 I had never never seen that before until just now.

Speaker 45 If you just listen to it, you listen to his breathing,

Speaker 50 he gets,

Speaker 37 there's a choked-uppedness and there is a linguistic tell.

Speaker 22 Yeah, there, we even got the sort of the hopscotchy.

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 22 It was like, so I don't, I mean,

Speaker 22 I don't know what, what is the physiological rules that constitute crying? We came as close as humanly possible.

Speaker 47 Yes, some constipated ducks.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 40 And in this way, I kind of relate to Belichick, honestly, like watching him fight it, like watching him as trying to just not get pinned by his parasympathetic nervous system.

Speaker 22 I know. And wasn't it interesting, too? The, the, he was subconsciously, he was, he was rubbing his own neck.
Then he turned away, like, I don't want to do this. He tried to walk away.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 That, and okay, okay but that matches yes

Speaker 22 loves and what he intensely and physically loves about the game was that kind of

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Speaker 10 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 Parcels.

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 23 Because there are players, I am told,

Speaker 17 who are, you know,

Speaker 39 willing to actually speak freely on the record.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 5 I have a feeling they're probably less awkward.

Speaker 22 But like, I got the trigger response of like, I want to go give Bill Bell a chick off.

Speaker 2 It did feel like watching your dad

Speaker 3 try his hardest to not cry in front of you.

Speaker 22 Yes. I genuinely felt sad for him in that situation watching that where it was like, oh man, just have a good cry.

Speaker 39 Which gets to the question of like, okay, he's the boss.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 1 That is the guy who sets the emotional temperature for the NFL at large when it comes to how players are supposed to act.

Speaker 14 And yet, as somebody who's covered the league forever, there is an interesting paradox, right?

Speaker 22 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,

Speaker 22 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, The Notebook. Everybody's bawling.

Speaker 22 People are crying because they're happy. People are crying because they're sad.
People are crying because it's over.

Speaker 37 They're jumping into each other's arms.

Speaker 22 It hides in plain sight. So I think it's a little bit about what we don't want to see.

Speaker 15 And yet, it's not easy to get someone to be like, yep, bawled continuously.

Speaker 37 Even the attempts to just confirm stupid little details has...

Speaker 14 We've been met by brick walls all over the place.

Speaker 39 It's just not a thing that's easy for guys to even really reflect on necessarily.

Speaker 21 And yet, I found someone,

Speaker 5 and of course, this person was down

Speaker 5 to actually give us the truth on this.

Speaker 3 Dominique, I summoned you back onto the show because, of course, I, of course, I did.

Speaker 35 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. So, thank you for being here.

Speaker 4 No problem, buddy. Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 I called up Dominique Foxworth to give us a sense of, like, okay,

Speaker 39 who are the people that you have seen personally cry?

Speaker 5 And what does that say about who does the most crying in the hardest, most masculine of sports?

Speaker 4 Hopefully I'm far enough away. Stature limitation is okay to name some of these names.
These are the names that you want to hear.

Speaker 4 The people who cried, who I saw crying and I saw most broken up over wins and losses

Speaker 4 were the Hall of Famers, the superstars, the all-time greats. And it wasn't even crying after losses.

Speaker 4 I remember a Thursday night game when I, after I signed my contract, and I'm in Baltimore. We went to Cleveland, play a Thursday night game.
The Browns are terrible.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I've always looked at this particular moment. It likes to stand out to me because

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 He'd already established himself as probably the best linebacker of all time. And

Speaker 4 this

Speaker 4 mundane ass game

Speaker 4 for me, for me, for me, this is a mundane ass game. So for him,

Speaker 4 like this has, he

Speaker 4 was so intense that he was in tears. He had worked himself up to a point that he was crying before we left the tunnel, a half-empty Cleveland Browns guaranteed win.

Speaker 4 And I just remember thinking that obviously physically we're different, but this is also why we're different. Like I can't get there emotionally.
And I've seen that that for other great players.

Speaker 4 And Ed was also somebody who was like incredibly emotional a lot of times.

Speaker 12 Ed Reed. Yeah.

Speaker 38 Arguably the greatest at his position.

Speaker 4 There's no argument. He is.
Like, I mean, Bill Belichick would agree. It's not an argument.
These are two greatest at their positions. And they were so emotionally invested.

Speaker 4 I think Terrell Suggs fits in this category also of someone who would

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We weren't crying.

Speaker 4 I never cried as a result of a game in the NFL. I've given up game-winning touchdowns.
I've made incredible game-winning plays. None of them have ever moved me to tears.

Speaker 4 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 was about me.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 Because you literally can't cry. Your body cannot cry unless you are pushed to the brink emotionally and physically.

Speaker 22 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?

Speaker 53 One in six doesn't define who you are. What defines who you are is what you do when you're one in six.

Speaker 53 What demands you will fight for. Just everything you got today.
Not because of the school boy,

Speaker 53 but because when this game ends, you have a brother to call for life.

Speaker 17 Knowing you gave everything you had.

Speaker 53 That's why you play as a raven. That's why you fight as a raven.

Speaker 22 What was fascinating to me was Dominique sort of acknowledging,

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 37 So, this gets to a theory that Dominique presents us because Dominique is also very self-aware, right?

Speaker 23 And he's saying, Look, yeah, I played seven years in the NFL as a cornerback.

Speaker 2 Yes, I was in all these locker rooms organizing them as the president of their union. I know the landscape of the league.

Speaker 39 All that is so, but also he has a theory about who cries the most and who doesn't.

Speaker 1 And so, he continues to sort of like lie on the therapy couch for us.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And the team always wanted to keep him and they never drafted anybody over him. And

Speaker 4 he never felt like it was in jeopardy.

Speaker 4 So I feel like, and this is my theory is same thing for quarterbacks is 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.

Speaker 4 And they still feel that way. And I, and I.

Speaker 4 jealous of them for a number of reasons, but that's one of them.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 22 If they're going to cry and signal for help, you do it in front of people who care about you enough to respond.

Speaker 22 And then somebody who understands the business of the game becomes a realist and/or cynic.

Speaker 36 Right.

Speaker 22 Those people aren't your family members. Your family are your family members.

Speaker 4 Obviously, you can look at any of the great players' lives, and things off the field

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 it like shrinks

Speaker 4 whatever space I have in my heart for that like genuine, beautiful hollywood style right friday nights yeah friday night lights level uh 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

Speaker 4 i was playing it's the dumbest ever i was the best player in the in the state maybe or at least in 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 the nfl

Speaker 4 I'd 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.

Speaker 5 It brings us all the way back to Caleb, right?

Speaker 37 Because Caleb Williams doing this after lost number three in a season in which he was already going to be the number one overall pick.

Speaker 40 He was the number one overall pick before this season started.

Speaker 36 Remember, he could have sat out all of these games.

Speaker 15 I want to mention how Caleb Williams played in this game, right?

Speaker 23 To give a sense of like what he cares about here.

Speaker 29 Because Caleb Williams statistics, four touchdowns, three passing, one rushing, passed for over 300 yards.

Speaker 50 USC scored 42 points.

Speaker 29 It's a keeper.

Speaker 49 Williams running for his life. Fires to the end zone.
Jeff Ball touched down. Race.
Open that time.

Speaker 29 Washington just happened to score 52.

Speaker 23 And so, no, Caleb made mistakes in this game, no question.

Speaker 37 But the point is, it's not that he is mourning the loss of his individual draft stock.

Speaker 36 In fact, he identifies with his defense, seemingly, as a family member would.

Speaker 14 And that's what he's reacting to, the fact that all of them lost together.

Speaker 22 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 shit matters to him.

Speaker 23 Right.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 3 And it just raises the last part of our understanding of Caleb Williams, which is that

Speaker 3 this mommy thing is still.

Speaker 5 still kind of extreme.

Speaker 22 To quote the great

Speaker 22 theologian Rob Gronkowski,

Speaker 20 it was a little weird.

Speaker 5 So this is where we acknowledge that none of it is as simple as we were necessarily hoping it would be.

Speaker 20 And isn't that awesome?

Speaker 45 Yeah, no, this is why we're here because I also asked Dominique, like, okay, so I understand this now.

Speaker 20 Your confidential view of locker rooms has now been made public.

Speaker 9 What about Caleb specifically, though?

Speaker 50 When it comes to your mommy,

Speaker 17 why are you flying, Caleb?

Speaker 1 Like that part.

Speaker 36 I'm like, yeah, dude.

Speaker 22 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 time. This is not just meathead locker room football talk, right?

Speaker 36 What else is like this?

Speaker 34 Is there anything else that is like watching Caleb Williams in the stands with his mom?

Speaker 37 What other great moments in weeping in your mommy's arms history, even are there in the NFL?

Speaker 22 This one,

Speaker 22 this comp is not going to help him. Okay.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 3 That's not good.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 54 Despite signing the most lucrative rookie deal at the time, George struggled mightily in his first three seasons for the Colts.

Speaker 54 He threw just 33 touchdowns to 40 interceptions and went 12 and 26 as a starter.

Speaker 31 Here's a throw on first down. It's kicked off and the Patriots might tie the game.

Speaker 47 Okay, so Jeff George, noted famous draft bust from the 90s.

Speaker 22 The worst leader out of any quarterback ever.

Speaker 10 That was his rep.

Speaker 13 He got drafted in 1990, first overall out of Illinois.

Speaker 22 So he got hurt when he was at Purdue before Illinois. He got hurt.
He was put on the little

Speaker 22 golf cart, right?

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 17 It's a terrible look.

Speaker 22 If you're a quarterback. Scouts don't forget stuff like this, right?

Speaker 20 That is all about comps.

Speaker 22 That is a comp that scares the crap out of them because I guarantee a handful of scouts lost their jobs over Jeff George.

Speaker 23 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 comp.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 3 where we actually let him speak for himself and have him explain what went on in his own brain.

Speaker 55 I was actually good until I, you know, kind of the mother's touch that you get sometimes, you know.

Speaker 2 You're all good, you're holding it in, you know, being the

Speaker 55 man.

Speaker 55 And then, you know, you get around your mom, touch your mom, hug your mom. Your mom says something to you.
And then, you know, you kind of just, you know, it just started flowing out.

Speaker 55 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.

Speaker 55 Because those emotions are going to happen until, you know, I'm probably done playing.

Speaker 10 And so what is the forecast here, Phlem?

Speaker 1 You are the guy who's been to every draft.

Speaker 11 And every combine, and now you get to play the role of how does this end for Caleb Williams?

Speaker 21 What do we find out about how Caleb Williams has potentially reframed what it means to be a mama's boy?

Speaker 22 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?

Speaker 22 A year from now, NFL scouts are going to be asking prospective franchise quarterbacks, why didn't you cry more?

Speaker 9 And just that phrase, a mother's touch, it's such a like

Speaker 11 wisened old man sort of verbiage for something that it turns out

Speaker 3 he's not alone in feeling when it comes to his NFL fraternity.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 He's a great guy, but like we weren't close. I was

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 My kids started crying.

Speaker 4 My wife is consoling me at this ceremony, trying to find more tissues

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 I'm the furthest, like not furthest relative from the deceased, but I'm in there looking like we were brothers.

Speaker 35 You're in there looking like a number one draft pick. Exactly.
Who might just request an equity share of the Chicago Bears?

Speaker 4 I was crying like a Heisman Trophy winner in that motherfucker.

Speaker 4 I was crying like a future Hall of Famer.

Speaker 4 That's how connected I was in that moment. And it's 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 22 I would ask people who still want to judge Caleb to think about their own triggers, right? The things that would set them off.

Speaker 22 I mean, that's where how i access 95 of my tears are are memories of of a of a loss um 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 incidentally 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.

Speaker 22 It's in there. It's in there.
We can, we'll find it together.

Speaker 5 We're on to Cincinnati.

Speaker 25 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production.

Speaker 43 And I'll talk to you next time.