Former Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart admits he blew his date with Rihanna because nerves and a lack of confidence got the better of him.

“I wasn’t at my best,” Matt Leinart said on the Dan Patrick Show. “I definitely wasn’t at my best that day. We were friends, we hung out a couple times, we had a mutual circle of friends, and her assistant and sort of right-hand girl, still to this day I’m friends with, she grew up with one of my best friends, so that was kind of the thing. But yeah, it was a young Matt, not super confident. You thought I would have had a lot of confidence; I didn’t, and yeah, so that’s that.”

Ask Matt Leinart about his infamous date with Rihanna, and he still can’t quite believe he’s talking about it. “Oh God, are we really going there?” he said.

Back in July 2025, Leinart dropped a bombshell on his podcast, Throwbacks, admitting he once took Rihanna out on a date and completely blew it. So what went wrong? According to him, it all came down to a blister on his lip that showed up on the worst possible day.

They met up at Teddy’s nightclub in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It should’ve been a fun night, but Leinart just couldn’t calm his nerves.

“The problem was I had this f****ng ginormous blister on my lip,” he told his podcast co-hosts, actor Jerry Ferrara and Josh Richman. “Dude, I can’t even.”

Before things ever got romantic, the two were actually just friends, having met through someone in their shared circle. But that blister turned him into a completely different person that night.

“I would get these sun blisters,” he said. “I felt like when I used to be super fat when I was little, and I was afraid to take my shirt off at P.E. You know, when you’re so embarrassed you’re like, ‘Please don’t look at me.’”

He knew about the blister ahead of time, and honestly, he probably could have called the whole thing off. Instead, his friends talked him into going anyway.

“I don’t know who in my world was like, ‘Dude, you’re okay, bro. You’re going to be f***ing fine. You’re going to be fine,’” Leinart said. “I was like, ‘No, I’m f***ing not!’”

Leinart admitted he felt awkward for the entire date and could barely look Rihanna in the eye.

“I couldn’t make eye contact, dude,” he recalled. ” I’m like, ‘Yeah, what’s up, what’s up?’ Like I couldn’t talk. He was like, ‘ Get me out of here. She was like, ‘Oh, this poor kid. ‘

Needless to say, there was no second date.

Rihanna now has three children with A$AP Rocky, while Leinart is married to former actress and attorney Josie Loren, with whom he has four children.