Look, it's no surprise to me that video games are mainstream enough to become a hobby for NFL players, but it's still pretty amazing to find out how much of a giant nerd LA Chargers linebacker Joey Bosa is.
A recent TikTok compilation splices together a bunch of Bosa's Mic'd Up clips and it's pretty clear from the first "Hadouken!" that Bosa is a gamer. Better yet, he's also huge into Dark Souls, as the guy can't help but tell everyone around him how much he loves the series.
"I'm about 15% away from beating Dark Souls 3," Bosa says in one clip. "'Bout two bosses--two or three left."
A later clip reveals Bosa's struggle with finding a good Dark Souls victory dance. "I don't have any good Dark Souls celebrations yet. Praise the sun is too obscure," Bosa said, although in an earlier clip he still shouts "praise the sun" after a touchdown. "I don't think anybody would know that."
I'd argue that there are plenty of people who would get "praise the sun" if performed during a live NFL game. And if not, might I humbly suggest this timeless Dark Souls classic.
It's not just Dark Souls that Bosa is into. At one point he asks a teammate if he'd ever played God of War on the hardest difficulty. Later he asks his coach if they'd ever played Call of Duty or Halo. That last one was asked only after performing a live-action tea bag during a game, which surprisingly didn't result in a penalty according to Polygon.
Bosa being a fan of Dark Souls makes sense to me. You've gotta have a pretty high pain tolerance to be an NFL player, and you've gotta be a masochist to enjoy playing Dark Souls. At least, that's how Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki explained it in an interview.