Von Miller prefers studying extinct animals to football

Von Miller either relishes being viewed as eccentric or truly doesn't care about what people think of him. Either way, his personality contrasts a world of robotic pro athletes who spout cookie-cutter answers and carefully curate their public personas.

A profile of the Super Bowl MVP and recent $114.5-million dollar man by The Ringer's Kevin Clark published Tuesday is chock-full of details about Miller's idiosyncrasies, and below are the two wildest things Miller says in it.

On the future of the human species:

"In the next 5,000 years there won’t be any more freckles or red hair,” says Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller. "That’s the way humans are evolving." Miller is sitting in Venice, California, during an offseason in which he’s become one of the most famous athletes in America. He’s stopped dealing himself cards so that he can focus fully on recounting a particularly juicy internet deep dive that led him to a batch of information he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about. "We will all eventually be bald, too," he adds, removing his hat and rubbing the thin layer of hair atop his head. "We lose hair because it helps us cool our brains faster. The smarter we get, the less hair we need, because our brains need to be cool. Also, we will lose another toe. We will have four toes."

On what he studies at home instead of football film:

"I spend a lot of time looking up extinct animals," he says. Miller describes this chain of events as though spending hours learning about Haast’s eagle was a highlight of his offseason. He’s particularly fascinated by the moa going extinct so quickly. It took only 100 years, he says. "That is so super fast. It normally takes at least 1,000 years. But that’s what happens. Humans hunted the moa to extinction, and the Haast’s eagle went extinct right after because that’s what he ate." (Dinosaurs are not a part of Miller’s fascination with the extinction process because "everyone already talks about them.")