You’ve got to hand it to Dwayne Johnson for always being in hype man mode, even when he’s addressing the biggest and most embarrassing failure of his professional career. Then again, maybe it wasn’t even intentional, but his comments regarding Henry Cavill’s short-lived return as Superman in the Black Adam post-credits scene seem way too coincidental to be an accident.

Recommended Videos

As you’ll no doubt be aware, The Rock recently launched the XFL football league for the third time, and in an even more unexpected development it was his own Teremana brand that somehow beat out the rest of the competition to be named as the outfit’s official tequila of choice.

Taking to the red carpet at last night’s Academy Awards, the actor and producer was blindsided by a question from Variety on Cavill’s ill-fated return as the DCU’s canonical Kryptonian, which Johnson deftly and expertly spun into a pigskin analogy.

“I think it’s almost like when you have a pro football team, and your quarterback wins championships, the head coach wins championships, and you have a new owner. And the new owner comes in, and says, ‘Not my coach, not my quarterback, I’m gonna go with someone new.'”

It was nothing short of a disaster on every level for Johnson to praise Cavill’s Superman wherever he went, outline the years of hard work he’s spent trying to bring him back into the fold, and then have the exiled Kal-El celebrate his glorious return to the fray on social media, only for the pair of them to almost immediately be cast aside when James Gunn and Peter Safran were installed as co-CEOs.

The football comparisons my be apt, but it’s still a surprise that he didn’t wink at the camera and remind viewers to check out the next round of XFL games at the end.