Dan Orlovsky is known for one thing as an NFL player. He was the guy who took off out the back of his own end zone while being chased by Jared Allen in the midst of an 0-16 Detroit Lions season in 2008.
Dan Orlovsky is known for two things as an NFL analyst. Knowing the hell out of the inner workings on the field and having, uh, peculiar tastes.
The 11-year veteran is arguably more relevant now than in his playing days as a co-host of ESPN’s NFL Live. Most mornings each fall he can be found expounding on quarterback play, defensive sets and the machinations of contenders and pretenders alike. Some afternoons and evenings, he can be found on Twitter, firing off odd bird takes like his laundry regimen or his penchant for the blandest food imaginable.
This led to Matthew Roberson’s incredible profile of the 40-year-old analyst over at GQ. The feature itself is well worth the read, as it dives into what makes Orlovsky who he is, how he found his second life off the field and what drives him. But if you’re looking for the Cliffs notes or maybe just a few extra reasons not to take his terrible Florida State/College Football Playoffs takes seriously, friends, you’re in luck.
1
He mostly eats "tan foods," occasionally like a cat
We’re already familiar with Orlovsky’s weird personal takes — his crusades against popular foods or anything with flavor. It turns out this is not a bit.
He dips the chicken into the pesto and gives it a preliminary taste test, putting his tongue up to it the way a cat would. Once deemed acceptable, he goes in. “I usually eat just grilled chicken with ketchup or something,” he reveals. “My thing is, if I know I like this, why would I get something I don’t know I like?” At Thanksgiving dinner this year, his plate was just macaroni and cheese with some Caesar salad. He also harbors a confusing disdain of universally adored foods like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and soda (he doesn’t like any drink with bubbles).
His culinary predilections are a constant source of bemusement for his co-hosts, Marcus Spears and Mina Kimes.
“The food is bad, man,” Spears laments. “Stupid. I’m from Louisiana and, obviously, I like to eat. This dude is the polar opposite of what I think food should be.” I ask Spears what would happen if Orlovsky ever encountered some down-South jambalaya or gumbo. “He’d die. On sight.” Fellow panelist Mina Kimes elaborates: “It’s really like, tan food,” she says. “He only eats the color tan. We were at a party in Kansas City for the draft. There was a buffet situation. I watched him grab five fruit tarts and scoop the fruit out of all of them. I’d never seen anything like it.”
Dude loves crust. Got it.
2
He regularly serenades the ESPN staff. It's *a lot*
They really let Dan Orlovsky, a man from Connecticut with the taste of a man from Connecticut, pick the music before each taping of NFL Live.
Before the cameras start rolling, everyone does a sort of unique New York warmup to get the vocal cords going. Orlovsky, by the way, serves as the group’s DJ, and today’s song is “Thinkin’ Bout Me” by Morgan Wallen. He roars into every show singing his heart out; later, he’ll bust out bars from ’90s anthems “Under the Bridge” and “One Week.” “I love singing. I’m awesome at it,” he says
Is Orlovsky as good as he believes? Friends, I think we all know the answer.
“It’s the corniest [expletive] you can imagine,” Kimes says of her friend’s music taste. “When he sings along, it’s really something to behold. He’s not awesome at it.”
3
He only gets five hours of sleep, thanks to his ESPN schedule and dad life (four kids!)
Oh cool, Orlovsky is the kind of high-achieving dork loathed by those of us who need eight hours of sleep each night.
During football season, Orlovsky is inconceivably busy. This is the way he likes it. “I gravitate toward physical pain,” he tells me, with no trace of humor in his voice. The idea today is to follow Orlovsky as he unfetters his Monday morning football takes. That means I arrive at ESPN’s Seaport studios to begin our day together at roughly 7:15 in the morning. Orlovsky, meanwhile, has been up since 4 a.m. to get a workout in. He was driven from his Connecticut home to the studios in lower Manhattan before the sun came up. He has four kids but is generally good on five hours of sleep. “He’s always on,” [Orlovski’s wife] Tiffany marvels. “He’s never tired.”
4
His NFL Live colleagues (!) think he's too serious about football
When Orlovsky joined NFL Live, Spears knew what his new costar was capable of. “He always had the X’s and O’s,” Spears says. “But he had to learn the entertainment part of TV. The entertainment part, I take credit for. Pushing him and being like, ‘Bro, not everything is super serious!’” Orlovsky remembers it mostly the same way. “Marcus was like, ‘Dan, you care about football too much,’” he says of their early days on set together. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘Dude, we do TV.’”
5
The began his football career with serious F-boy qualities
It’s not just that Orlovsky approached prime himbo status with a 0.67 grade point average his freshman year at the University of Connecticut — though he was able to pull that up to a 3.0 to remain on the team in Storrs. It’s that he had his own burner phone specifically for the ladies once he got to the pros.
After college, the Lions took Orlovsky in the fifth round of the 2005 draft. He was a backup for Joey Harrington and Jeff Garcia on a 5-11 team, not exactly the savior Detroit needed. But he was in his 20s, making NFL money, and having fun. “I was still being Peter Pan,” Orlovsky says. “I was still being a loser. I had two cell phones. One that was my phone, and then I had a T-Mobile Sidekick that I was using to text this girl or that girl.”
6
He's trying to relax by following the wisdom of Jimmy Buffett
It’s five o’clock (in the morning and you’ve been up for an hour working) somewhere.
He’s working to get better at it, though, and praises an in-law for a basic pearl of wisdom that helps him mellow out. “My wife’s mom is a Parrothead. She’s changed my life for the better in this regard: You gotta enjoy your life.”
7
He seems like a whole, whole lot if you wind up in an argument with him
It turns out the combination of over-thinking and early mornings make Orlovsky the kind of friend for whom you turn off phone notifications.
“I love being right,” he crows. “I mean, it’s a flaw. But that’s my game day—my victories are being right when other people aren’t. My victories are finding stuff. That’s my wins. I take a lot of pride in that too, I honestly do.” His coworkers certainly know this as well. “He loves being right,” Kimes agrees. “If he’s right about something and it’s proven correct three years later, he’ll text me about it at 5 a.m. It’s very funny.”
Look, we all have a Dan Orlovsky in our lives. Perhaps we are him sometimes.
But yeah, there is always a moment where you know you’ll have to eat crow because some energetic, over-prepared weirdo was right all along. And the face smiling back at you on the other side of that conversation will be Dan’s.
