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In middle school, he’d return home from basketball games, still in his uniform, and run out to the yard, a football tucked under his arm. He decided that if he excelled at football, he’d have that respect and appreciation.Īnd he hoped he’d feel a little less lost. Football players were kings, walking the halls with swagger in letterman jackets, a gaggle of girls trailing behind them. In high school, he saw that the cool kids were bullies, acting out and shouting takedowns of their peers. 'I felt like something was wrong with me.'

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'People that look like me, with my skin color, would kind of rag on me, like, ‘Why are you ? Why you talk the way you do?’' Waller says. Many of his neighborhood friends were white. He cared so much about what others thought of him, especially as a light-skinned African-American. Darren loved when that adulation carried over to his Pee-Wee football exploits.Īway from football, though, he was self-conscious.

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The family would gather around the TV on weekends, cheering during SEC and NFL games. In addition to UGA, Darren’s father, Dorian, was a New York Giants fan, and his mother followed Washington. In Georgia, football is treated like religion, particularly the Georgia Bulldogs. When he started football at age 5, he brought that recall ability with him to the field. His mother, Charlena, says he was reading by 2 years old, and she realized her son had essentially a photographic memory. Growing up in Acworth, Georgia, Waller was a quiet, shy child. 'What expectations really do is reflect our impatience and our insecurities, our inability to live life on life’s terms.' - Darren Waller, Monday Motivations He was destroying himself with alcohol and opioids. That Darren Waller, he says, didn’t care about football.

He is quarterback Derek Carr’s most frequent target, totaling more than 1,100 receiving yards in each of his past two seasons.Īt age 28, Waller has the potential to be one of the best to ever play the position - an outcome that seemed impossible for the lost rookie sitting in that room in Baltimore. He’s a 6-foot-6, 255-pound nightmare for opposing defenses. Six years after getting drafted and now a Las Vegas Raider, Waller is one of the top three tight ends in the NFL. FOX Sports Digital tells the story of how Waller nearly lost his NFL career to substance abuse before getting clean and returning to the league.Įver since he was a teenager, Waller had heard everyone tell him that football would make him happy. Raiders tight end Darren Waller might be one of the best players in the NFL, but his path to stardom was anything but simple. 'Maybe I’m messing it all up,' he thought. 'I’m going to walk out,' he said to himself. But Waller actually contemplated those words. It was nothing more than coach-speak, a bit of bravado to fire up the team. 'If you don’t love football, just walk out of here and leave,' the Ravens head coach told the players. John Harbaugh stepped up and addressed the group. He sat in silence, which wasn’t unusual for rookies.īut this particular rookie had a darker reason to keep to himself: He harbored a secret that threatened to destroy his NFL career before it could begin.

Instead, Waller wanted to be anywhere else. The sixth-round pick should have been ecstatic he’d made it to the NFL. The Baltimore Ravens rookie nodded at his new teammates as they entered the room at training camp in 2015. Darren Waller sat inside the auditorium, waiting for one of his first official team meetings to begin.

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