First, let's provide a little background on the fun Nick Mullens story which gained a lot of traction among the media this past season.
"My favorite story so far, that I've heard, is when we have away games, he puts on his headphones to super-loud crown noise," San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle told reporters after the team's Week 9 victory over the Oakland Raiders, which was Mullens' first NFL start. "And then he calls the plays out loud, so he gets used to calling them with a lot of noise all around him."
Kittle also shared that he believed Mullens would take the game-day play script after a game and go onto the stadium field to run the plays by himself. That story, according to Mullens, is a complete fabrication by Kittle.
"I always prepare as hard as I can but that was a stretch," Mullens told Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area on the latest 49ers Insiders Podcast.
The first story, however, was not. The headphone story encouraged the media to ask Mullens about his preparation ritual repeatedly. What exactly was he listening to? Where did he find stadium crowd noise?
The tracks themselves, Mullens later revealed, are actually within Apple Music's library.
So how did Kittle gain knowledge of what Mullens was doing at home to prepare for games? It turns out that Mullens' wife is to blame.
"You guys wore me out (with the questions) on that one," Mullens told Maiocco. "That is all thanks to Kittle and his fiancé, actually. Wives talk."
Mullens' wife, Haleigh, would send Kittle's fiancé, Claire, videos of the quarterback's ritual. Claire, of course, shared them with her husband-to-be and Kittle, being Kittle, shared the story with the media.
"That is how the story was born," Mullens continued. "Just stupid Snapchats of me doing my job, man. So it was a funny story, for sure."
You can listen to the entire interview with Mullens below.