Orville Peck has spent two months refusing to say which Las Vegas Raiders player he made out with. On Wednesday night in Philadelphia, he brought Carl Nassib out on stage instead.
Nassib is the first active NFL player ever to come out as gay, and he did it in 2021 while he was playing for the Raiders. The two of them sang Bonnie Raitt‘s Something to Talk About face to face, in matching black sleeveless tops, near the end of the show.
In case anyone missed the hint, the setlist spelled it out. About ten songs earlier, Peck had performed the track with the Raiders line in it.
A fan was filming, and the clip was on TikTok before the night was over. You can watch it further down. First, the backstory, plus a detail from Peck’s own interviews that makes the dating rumors a lot less simple.
The Lyric That Started The Guessing Game
If you know Peck, it might be from his fringed mask, or from the 2024 music video where he and Noah Cyrus both fell for Heated Rivalry‘s François Arnaud. His new album, Mule, came out on September 18, and most of it is heavy going. It tells the story of the year he overdosed before a 2023 tour opener in New York, canceled the tour and went to rehab, in the order it happened.
Then there’s Ring the Bell. In the middle of a list of the sports teams he loves, Peck slips in that he “made out with a guy on the Raiders.”
He told Variety he asked the man first, and that the player was “very thrilled” to be in the song. Peck said he’d never have done it to someone who was closeted or scared of it getting out, and that the guy would probably have let him use his name. He chose not to, and told fans they could use their “common sense” to work out who it was. Asked straight out whether it was Nassib, he wouldn’t confirm or deny it.
The Guardian got even less. Pressed for details, Peck offered exactly one line: “I snogged him and it was hot.”
Why Everyone Guessed Carl Nassib
Fans didn’t need a long list of suspects. Nassib came out in an Instagram post on June 21, 2021, during Pride Month, while he was a defensive end for the Raiders. He was the first active NFL player to do it, and in the same post he pledged $100,000 to The Trevor Project.
Later that year he became the first openly gay player to take the field in an NFL game. He played one more season, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and announced his retirement in September 2023.
Wednesday was also close to a home crowd for him. Nassib grew up in West Chester, just outside Philadelphia.
The Duet, And The Video
The show was at the Metropolitan Opera House, a stop on Peck’s Man Turned Mule Tour. Something to Talk About was written by Shirley Eikhard and became a top five hit for Raitt in 1991. It’s a song about two friends whose whole town is convinced they’re secretly lovers, and who start to wonder if the town has a point.
According to JamBase, it was the first time Peck had ever played it live.
In the clip, the two of them sing straight at each other, grinning, while the band plays behind them. At one point Peck turns and throws an arm out toward Nassib, like he’s presenting him to the room. The fan who posted it summed it up: “i don’t know much about sports, but this was hot.”
And yes, that’s a hug at the end. Another clip doing the rounds on X carried a simpler caption: “gay football player meets gay cowboy.”
So, Are They Dating?
That’s where a lot of fans went next, and Instinct Magazine openly wondered whether this was a soft launch. Neither man has said anything to suggest it, and there’s a detail from Peck’s September press run that most of Wednesday’s coverage skipped: he isn’t single.
Variety noted that his longtime partner has supported him through the album’s confessions. The Guardian reported that he has found love again, and ended its interview with Peck sheepishly explaining a bandaged hand. He had fractured a finger punching his partner’s birthday cake as a joke.
He hasn’t named the partner, and nothing either man has said publicly connects Nassib to that relationship. Nassib’s last publicly known boyfriend was Danish Olympic swimmer Søren Dahl. In early 2024 the two unfollowed each other on Instagram, which Out read as a breakup.
So is Nassib the Raider? Officially, it’s still unconfirmed.
But Peck did tell fans to use their common sense. Then he brought out a former Raider in a matching tank top and sang him a song about people who can’t stop talking.