Asked to locate when the obsession first gained a foothold in his life, wedging its way from fleeting notion to life-defining ethos, Caleb Downs identifies the latter stages of his sophomore year in high school as the likely origin.
It was around that time, Caleb explains, when he began watching videos about Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, three of the most famous and most prosperous athletes in American sports. Sure, he’d seen all their highlights looped ad nauseum on social media — which young kid hadn’t? — but for the first time in a life that brimmed with far more promise than most, Downs remembers his fascination gravitating toward the traits and habits that made those players otherworldly rather than the feats of otherworldliness themselves.
“I got to a point,” Caleb told me, “where I was really trying to seek out how to be great and seek out what other people did to be great. That turned into the deep dive of just looking at whatever I saw success as for other people, figuring out what were the things that they did, what were the things that they believed in that led to their success. People that are, like, the biggest and the best in their fields.”
Athletically speaking, Caleb himself now qualifies for admission to that exclusive group. He developed into a five-star prospect and the No. 1 safety in the country at Mill Creek High School in Hoschton, Georgia, a suburb to the northeast of Atlanta, and then enrolled at Alabama to play for legendary head coach Nick Saban, under whom he became the first freshman in program history to lead the Crimson Tide in tackles.
From there, Caleb transferred to Ohio State ahead of the 2024 campaign and promptly earned unanimous first-team All-American honors while leading the Buckeyes to their first national championship in a decade. He is, now, at 20 years old, simultaneously the best player on Ohio State’s defense and the best defensive player in college football. Come April, he’s likely to be the first safety selected in the top 10 of the NFL Draft since former LSU standout Jamal Adams eight years ago.
For all the sweat equity needed to hone his physical greatness — and those hours have now soared into the tens of thousands — Caleb is also keenly aware of the biological and environmental advantages that are underwriting the journey. His father, Gary, was a running back at NC State who spent seven years in the NFL, eventually crossing over into coaching at both the high school and collegiate levels. His older brother, Josh, was a two-time, first-team All-ACC selection at North Carolina and is now a starting wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts. His older sister, Kameron, was a Division I soccer player at Kennesaw State before embarking on medical school at Wake Forest. His mother, Tanya, who is now a math teacher, played soccer from childhood through high school.
“[Caleb] was the best football player in our family for sure,” Josh told me. “He still is.”
Such genetic gifts have always made the actual playing of sports seem effortless for Caleb, who stands 6 feet tall and weighs 205 pounds, be that amid a cleverly disguised coverage for an Ohio State unit leading the country in both total defense (214.8 yards per game) and scoring defense (6.9 points per game), or the advanced skills he flashed in youth soccer games after which opposing parents questioned his age. He had no control over his fortuitous combination of DNA — nobody does — but anyone familiar with the Downs family knew superior athleticism would almost certainly be there.
What Caleb could control, though, was his seemingly quenchless curiosity about the lives and lifestyles of the outlandishly accomplished, whether those people landed inside or outside the sporting realm. His childhood fascination with superheroes gave way to an adolescent embrace of biographies and non-fiction reading. His high school deep dives into some of football’s greatest safeties were supplanted by genuflections before Saban and, this season, new Ohio State defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, a three-time Super Bowl winner revered for his intellect. An unwavering drive to understand what makes successful people tick has led Caleb to stacks of self-help books, financial literacy courses and real estate investments. His purview extends far beyond single-high safety coverages.
“How you see the world,” Gary told me. “That is at the essence of what he’s studying and watching. How you see the world and how does this system within the world work. Whether that’s the transportation system, whether that’s the economy, whether that’s football or the government. How does it work? And then how do people work?”
That’s the obsession fueling Caleb Downs.
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I) The Subconscious
One of the stories that Gary and Tanya share about their youngest son, Caleb, focuses on the brief period when it seemed like nothing mattered more to him than learning to solve a Rubik’s Cube. He was in fourth or fifth grade at the time, maybe a smidgeon older, and had seen several classmates accomplish the feat at school. He noticed how those kids were praised and revered for their unique talent. It was something that made them elite.
Upon returning home one afternoon, Caleb vaulted into a two-week binge of internet videos and marathon practice sessions until he, too, could conquer the cube. He performed the puzzle faster and faster with each passing day, dazzling his brother and sister by once completing it in 60 seconds. “It was crazy,” Tanya told me. And then once that particular task had been perfected, Caleb put down the Rubik’s Cube and shifted to his next fixation.
“Some things just catch his eye,” Gary told me, “and all of a sudden he wants to know about it and wants to master it.”
There are plenty of stories from Caleb’s parents and siblings that suggest he’s been wired this way his whole life, the youngest in a family that revolved around athletics and housed enough sibling rivalry so that proving oneself was always part of the equation. All three children reference the day-to-day structure imparted by Gary, an ex-athlete and strong man of faith, as the driving force behind an ecosystem that was ripe for incubating future stars, be that in sports or any other walk of life — so long as those passions were pursued seriously. And Caleb, as it turned out, was always serious.
At 2 years old, Caleb began navigating what Kameron described as his “football men phase,” a stretch of childhood in which her younger brother staged mock games on his bedroom floor using plastic figurines, always deploying the same faux teams and imagined scenarios that he came to know by heart. He was transfixed by superhero shows like “The Flash” and “Arrow” to the extent that he re-watched episodes time after time, never tiring of the main characters’ prowess. He was steadfast about only playing with a select group of toys around the house but could be mesmerized by those favorites for hours.
“I think he was just very imaginative in that way,” Kameron told me. “The things he liked, he would do over and over again.”
All of which contributed to an expanded awareness that belied his age. He taught himself to do one-handed push-ups at 4 years old and routinely broke them out at daycare for female classmates. His father, who had never demonstrated such an exercise, was floored when Caleb’s teacher relayed the pattern. It was around that same time, Gary told me, when he recalls stepping out of the gym during one of Caleb’s youth basketball games and returning to find his son deep in conversation with two strangers in their 70s, both of whom said Caleb had asked questions that were “very profound.”
Tanya shared a nearly identical story in which Caleb held court by himself with one of Gary’s coaching colleagues two years later. In both cases, an adolescent Caleb had shown genuine interest in learning about the experiences of other people.
His heightened intuition carried over seamlessly to athletics, where Kameron remembers opposing coaches trying to have Caleb thrown out of U6 soccer because they suspected he was far older than Gary and Tanya were letting on, particularly when he began unleashing slide tackles at a junction when other kids were still “picking flowers.” It was a skill he’d observed and internalized while watching his older siblings’ games.
In football, a sport Caleb was initially reluctant to try, Tanya recalled one particular touchdown where her son deliberately ran through the more crowded side of the field. Afterward, Caleb told his mother that he’d noticed some of the defenders’ shoes were untied, meaning they wouldn’t have caught him even if they tried. He was 6 years old.
Such rationality from Caleb was in lockstep with Gary’s personality, especially when it came to their preferred subjects at school. In an academic sense, neither Caleb nor Gary had much use for anything theoretical or make-believe. They were unbothered by classic novels in language arts. Instead, both of them preferred social studies and history because those topics were rooted in knowledge they could absorb, analyze and apply. The self-improvement books and biographies that lined Gary’s bookshelves at home soon became Caleb’s favorites as well.
“He was like, ‘I’m not going to read something where I get to imagine what the end of the story is,’” Tanya told me. “He just wanted facts. He’s always been about facts.”
And he’ll do whatever it takes to keep learning.
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II) The Realization
Not long after Caleb went down the Mamba Mentality rabbit hole, fawning over the alter ego ascribed to Kobe Bryant, long regarded as one of the most dogged and unflappable competitors in sports, he had a conversation with Gary that streamlined the trajectory of his career.
Then a high school sophomore, Caleb was less than two years into his long-range transition from running back to safety, though he still moonlighted on offense when necessary. He’d been elevated to the No. 1 defensive back in the country by most recruiting services, but didn’t know exactly what that standard translated to at the collegiate and professional levels. Relying solely on instincts and athleticism, as Caleb had done for most of his freshman and sophomore seasons, would only take him so far.
That’s when father and son devised a plan inspired by the following words: “Put before your eyes that which you want to be,” meaning if Caleb wanted to embody the top-ranked safety in the country, he needed to become an expert on players who fit that mold. His new list of study subjects included Ed Reed, Sean Taylor, Brian Dawkins, Troy Polamalu, Ronnie Lott and Eric Berry, a handful of the best safeties in NFL history. Caleb pored over highlight tapes, interview footage, feature stories and documentaries — anything and everything from which he might glean bits of what made those players into stars.
“What types of plays they were making, what type of work ethic do they have, what did they stand for, who these people were to be considered great, to be considered the top in their field, elite in that category,” Caleb told me. “I mean, that’s how I saw myself.”
By then, Caleb was already an active participant in devising game plans and scheming up in-game adjustments at Mill Creek, where head coach Josh Lovelady willingly leaned on him for input. The collaborative nature of that relationship was exactly what Gary had hoped for when deciding where his younger son should attend high school. He had pushed aside one program the family liked because, as Gary told me, “I didn’t want him to be under a coach that would be offended by Caleb; some coaches aren’t used to players having any ideas.” And for years, Caleb had grown accustomed to working in tandem with his youth coach, Pat Mullins, who made a habit of sending him tape and asking for feedback on certain teams or individuals.
“You’re not the producer or the director,” Gary told me, “but you’re acting. And having a director or producer that is willing to take, you know, some inference from you [is huge]. I think in his role as a player, being around the right coaches that recognized [Caleb’s] ability to see football was really important.”
Charles Kelly, who became Caleb’s primary recruiter at Alabama, told me he only needed to see four plays to identify the best prospect on the field when he watched Mill Creek live for the first time, so obvious was the talent wearing the No. 2 jersey. Later that evening, Caleb called Kelly to thank him for making the 250-mile trip from Tuscaloosa. Their conversation lasted nearly three hours as the coach drove from Douglasville, Georgia, back to the Crimson Tide’s campus, during which time Caleb lobbed question after question regarding high-level football strategy. They never made it to another topic.
But even when Caleb wanted to talk about football, he wasn’t always talking about football — not in a traditional sense with X’s and O’s and defensive philosophy. He often asked Kelly to describe some of the best defensive backs he’d ever coached, like Brian Branch at Alabama (2020-22) and Derwin James at Florida State (2015-17), eager to learn about what those players did off the field in preparation for games. They went deep on topics like strength and conditioning, nutrition and how the business world worked, how football players could market themselves in college and beyond. The intellectual nature of their relationship reminded Kelly of something his mother used to tell him growing up: “The more books you read,” she told him, “the more you increase your intelligence.” And by then, Caleb was already an avid reader.
“He would just say [things like], How is this guy successful?” Charlie Strong, a defensive analyst with the Crimson Tide when Downs was at Alabama and now the defensive line coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, told me. “And it wasn’t just football players. It was about people outside of football. What do I have to do to be like this person?“
And there was, perhaps, no person who Caleb wanted to be like more than Saban, arguably the greatest coach in college football history with seven national championships and a dynastical run at Alabama until his retirement following the 2023 season. A huge portion of Saban’s messaging to his teams, Kelly told me, was about success being the product of myriad small decisions that are made every day. To someone as regimented and goal-oriented as Caleb, who arrived in the weight room promptly at 6 a.m. each day, those words seemed to validate the way he’d already been living his life.
So Caleb planted himself by Saban’s side during every defensive backs meeting, which he always led given his background with that position. Caleb could ask any question he wanted, as many questions as he wanted, and Saban delighted in having such an inquisitive pupil with an advanced football mind. The two remain in close contact to this day.
“He was the reason Caleb went to Alabama,” Tanya told me. “On all the visits we went to, when we would sit and talk with Coach Saban, it was like Caleb was in a trance listening to him, soaking in all of the advice he was giving.
“All of his teammates, they would joke and say that Caleb was like Coach Saban more than anybody else on the team.”
Just two obsessive peas in a pod.
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III) The Maturation
Earlier this season, Caleb and his father met with an individual who works in Hollywood. They were interviewing prospective agents at the time — an important process amid what is presumed to be Caleb’s final collegiate season ahead of the 2026 NFL Draft — and one of the firms interested in securing Caleb’s signature happened to house an entertainment division as well as sports. The representative in front of them worked with actors.
For a movie buff like Caleb, whose favorite birthday gift last year was an unlimited popcorn tub that could be refilled on every trip to a theater, the meeting presented an opportunity he couldn’t resist. He wanted to know how the agent selects which actors to work with, how those actors identify roles that best fit their respective careers, how scripts are developed and then matched with the talent that will ultimately be seen on screen. He was fascinated by the agent’s insight after spending plenty of his own time researching the paths that some of his favorite actors, like Denzel Washington, took to stardom. Because in his mind, Caleb told me, “acting is performing at the highest of levels,” and there is plenty that can be drawn from those who do it well.
“You would think from this conversation that Caleb wanted to become an actor,” Gary told me. “But he is literally learning because it can be applied to coaching and applied to developing a team. He was engrossed in this conversation.”
Though Caleb has always loved movies, his deeper fascination with the what and the why behind them reflects a curiosity that is evolving with age — even though he won’t turn 21 until December. He was often the person his friends went to for advice during high school, Tanya told me, because he could glide so effortlessly between moments of goofiness with kids his age and full-fledged conversations with adults. He never partied or veered “from the straight and narrow,” according to Kameron, and always leaned on God for instruction.
And now that he’s in college, where immense on-field talent translates directly to earning power and marketing opportunities in the modern landscape, Caleb’s life has begun to resemble those of the successful people about whom he reads. “I always tell my friends I want to be like him when I grow up,” Tanya told me.
And for good reason. Caleb has already invested in a handful of properties around Columbus amid an ongoing fascination with generating passive income. He’s become advertising partners with brands like Celsius, Beats by Dre, American Eagle, Hulu, T-Mobile, Crocs and Ritz, among others. He looks after his body through regular appointments with a massage therapist, a chiropractor and a facility where he can use a hyperbaric chamber to expedite recovery.
Gary told me that after his son read “The Hidden Habits of Genius,” which analyzes the behavioral traits of geniuses throughout history, Caleb began correlating days of the week with certain food and outfits — just like some of the book’s main characters — so that he wouldn’t waste any brainpower worrying about such things. Caleb also read “Rich Dad Poor Dad” to improve his financial literacy and gain a better understanding of asset management. At Ohio State, he’s majoring in business with an emphasis on real estate.
“I’m not going to be playing football my whole life,” Caleb told me. “There’s gonna be a lot more to do after the fact. Some of the characteristics that I have right now in football could carry over, but there’s also characteristics that businessmen and people that are tycoons in their own fields [have] that I could take.”
Which helps explain why one of the first things Caleb asked new defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, who has a degree in aeronautical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was about his educational background. Patricia, now 50, was literally on the path toward becoming a rocket scientist when he decided to spurn that career arc and take the plunge into coaching. Naturally, Caleb had more than a few questions. “He’s a very exceptional person,” Caleb told me.
Before they met, Caleb spent time studying some of the safeties who played for Patricia during an NFL tenure that included nearly two decades under Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots and a three-year stint as head coach of the Detroit Lions. His research gave way to lengthy conversations with Patricia during spring practice that explored the intricacies of a well-regarded defensive system, including several film sessions when they broke things down together. They also engaged in detailed discussions about why certain players, coaches and organizations in the NFL were more successful than others over time — a staple of Caleb’s inquisitive nature.
Patricia quickly realized that Caleb had the unique ability to apply ideas and concepts on the field without first needing to see them drawn on a whiteboard. Caleb could visualize the moving pieces “like a chessboard,” Patricia told me, to a degree that reminded him of interactions he’d had with NFL veterans, the types of players whose schematic catalogs should include twice as many entries as a college junior. But Caleb displayed what Patricia describes as “a reservoir of plays and football knowledge in his head” that is unlike anyone else on the Ohio State defense, which makes him the most versatile cog in the Buckeyes’ machine.
Large-scale similarities between how coach and player process football in real time continue to catalyze some of the Buckeyes’ masterful in-game adjustments under Patricia, whose unit will enter Saturday’s date with Purdue having only surrendered two third-quarter touchdowns all season. Each week, Caleb and Patricia sit together on the sideline between series to brainstorm ideas based on what they’ve just seen: Hey, Coach, what do you think about this look here pre-snap? Does that fit? The exchanges are reminiscent of those Caleb enjoyed in high school and with his youth teams before that. Together, he and Patricia have formed a symbiotic brain trust powering the sport’s best defense.
“He’s the best college football player — defensive football player — in the country, for sure,” Patricia told me. “And as you’re going into the draft, we would always say, ‘Hey, our first-rounders better be the face of the franchise.’ And he is a guy that is going to be a face of your franchise.”
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IV) The Future
As Caleb blossomed into a nationwide star at Mill Creek, the football staff had an assistant coach named Paul Pierce, a man forever confused with the Hall-of-Fame basketball player from the Boston Celtics. Pierce had three sons passing through the high school around that same time, all of them athletes, and he recalls meeting the Downs family — Gary, Josh, Caleb — when they were running on the track one day while his own boys threw baseballs.
He was impressed with the way Josh and Caleb carried themselves, always answering his questions with “Yes, sir,” or “No, sir,” and admired what he sensed was a strong example put forth by Gary. Within a year or two, as Caleb found his voice in the football locker room before games, addressing the team with motivational speeches and leading the group in prayer, Pierce would find himself struck by the young man’s level-headedness despite all the attention coming his way. On more than one occasion, Pierce asked Caleb to speak with his youngest son, Daniel, an eventual first-round round pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, about the proper ways to behave and how to surround himself with the right people amid the trappings of inbound fame.
“Top-notch, first-class,” Pierce told me. “That’s the kind of kid I wanted my boys to be around.”
Pierce, like so many others, understood that Caleb would be highly successful in life with or without his athleticism, the possibilities at his fingertips all but endless. And the breadth of Caleb’s intellectual curiosity — from sports and real estate to finance and psychology — meant that there’s never been a consensus among those close to him about what he’ll do when football inevitably ends. They believe his talents are applicable to virtually anything.
Said Gary: “I think he would be a business leader. And I think he would also be in [politics], whether that’s some kind of local, state or federal government.”
Said Kameron: “I feel like he would find something very niche that he could get really good at and then somehow create a business where he consults other people on how to be good at it.”
Said Kelly: “It wouldn’t surprise me if he was an owner of an NFL team one day.”
Said Tanya: “Figure out how to conquer the world. I think he wants to own a bunch of real estate and be a big real estate mogul.”
But until that day comes — until Caleb is forced to find a primary obsession that doesn’t include being the best defensive player in the country, a surefire first-round pick and the future face of an NFL franchise — he’ll keep doing what he’s doing for the Buckeyes as they chase a second consecutive national championship.
Because, as it turns out, Caleb is better than just about anybody at football, too.
“When I was a kid,” Kameron told me, “I was like, ‘I wonder when he’s going to be average compared to everyone,’ kind of like a hater sibling. And now I’m like, ‘Oh…’
“It just never happened.”
Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.
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