You will rarely ever see a player with a more potent combination of character and talent than Raiders tight end Darren Waller. Days after surpassing 1000 yards for the second straight season and being named to his first Pro Bowl, Waller was named the first ever two-time Craig Long Award recipient.
For those unfamiliar, this is the seventh year the Craig Long Award has been given out by the Raiders. It is chosen by a select group of local media and facilitated by the Las Vegas Raiders’ Media Relations department, and presented to the player who best exemplifies professionalism and collaboration with the media at large.
As a member of the Raiders media, I can tell you Waller is very well-deserving of this award. Since the moment he became a player we sought to speak with, he has been one of the most open, honest, and personable players I’ve ever covered.
It’s striking, really, because this wasn’t always the case for Waller. His path to Oakland and now Las Vegas was paved with pitfalls during his time in Baltimore that had him suspended multiple times, including for the entire 2017 season for repeated violations of the league’s substance abuse policy.
In fact, his story of fighting through addiction was how he was introduced to most Raiders fans and NFL fans in general because he allowed HBO’s Hard Knocks crew to tell his story in great detail during their attendance in the teams training camp in 2019.
I asked Waller if he could talk about how he was able to get to the point where he is so comfortable speaking with the media and he responded as only Darren Waller can.
“I was far from an open book years ago,” Waller said. “I never imagined myself or planned on speaking the way that I speak now. It took accepting who I was, accepting what I did, and realizing that it didn’t have to define me and I could do something different about it. Just not dwelling in those things and getting rid of the shame of it. There was a lot of shame, a lot of guilt for all the times that I was suspended. Not representing my team and my family name the way that I could have. I would always carry that around with me everywhere I went. Just addressing that stuff and deciding to leave that stuff behind and move forward just makes me feel like lighter and freer. There’s nothing anybody can say that could put me down about it. I’ve already put myself down enough and now that I’ve moved past it there’s no looking back for me.”
Waller is a walking soundbite pretty much anytime he steps in front of the media. Not because he says anything controversial, but because his words are so consistently inspirational. And because he is so intelligent and comfortable in his own skin that he always has something worth hearing and in turn worth reading.
It helps that he’s also a tremendously talented player too.
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