As Cade arrives at White’s compound, he passes by White’s devoted fans, who are strange and menacing. They even have a sign that says White is the “chosen one.” One character says that White’s fan club is “like a cult.”
Apparently, White’s fan club hates Cade because he might end up replacing their revered leader. Later, one deranged fan mysteriously appears with Cade in a sauna and tries to murder him. Cade evades her attack in the nick of time, and White kills his fan instead.
When Cade first enters the compound’s training room, another player says, “Welcome to church.” White makes comments implying that he sees himself as a god and tells Cade that instead of “God, family, football,” he believes in “football, family, God.” For Cade, family comes first, although that value arguably shifts as the story progresses.
Cade wears a cross necklace throughout the movie, while White wears a similar-looking cross earring. We also see White receiving blood transfusions throughout the movie and later learn it is this blood that gives White his supernatural abilities as a quarterback.
“I am him,” White says at one point. “I am football.”
Goat imagery abounds in the film and is played up for its occultic symbolism as well as for the meaning of the acronym “greatest of all time.” The people who see White as the GOAT mean this quite literally and bestow on him a god-like status. There are multiple weird mascots with horns throughout the movie, and sometimes there is bleating in the background. When Cade first meets his hero, White is doing something with a goat skull.
Cade is slowly gaslit by the man he has “damn near worshiped” for his whole life, as well as by a doctor of dubious talents whom White employs and the other players training at the compound. They put Cade into uncomfortable situations and then shame him for reacting with discomfort.
When the discomfort escalates to everyone acting like violence is normal, Cade responds with shock but does not resist what is happening outright. His acceptance is likely facilitated by a mysterious substance the doctor repeatedly injects into Cade without warning.
Cade’s turning point to accepting White’s view of the world seems to come when, in the middle of training, Cade seriously injures another player, who ends up bleeding on the ground. At first Cade is stunned and tells White, “I just got lost.” But after White praises Cade, they and the other players celebrate around the fallen player, calling out, “Amen.”
The most overt religious imagery arguably takes place when Cade attends a party the night before his final day at the compound. The doctor greets Cade at the party and mentions that Jesus took a sip of wine before saying, “It is finished.” The doctor then tells Cade to “run.”
It’s not clear why he did not give Cade that warning earlier. Previous scenes did not strongly convey the idea the doctor would want to help Cade, although at one point the doctor expresses some regret for what is going to happen. Cade finds the warning strange but does not leave.
Later in the party scene, Cade and a group of people that includes the Saviors’ owners all drink what looks like glasses of wine, after which Cade descends into a sort of fever dream. He wakes up the next day receiving a transfusion of White’s blood.
After injecting himself with something in a syringe that says “run” on the side of it, Cade encounters White, who gives him the big reveal that the blood is the secret to being a superhuman quarterback. Apparently, it has been passed down from a line of quarterbacks who preceded White. When Cade asks, “There can only be one?,” White confirms that that is the case.
