You spelled Deflate wrong
1 Like
By God.
and stats wise
“The Patriots finished the game with four interceptions. It is the fourth time in 2019 that the Patriots have had four interceptions in a game. They had four picks at Miami on Sept. 15, at Buffalo on Sept. 29 and at the N.Y. Jets on Oct 21.”
I’m not sure if people are aware of Rob Parker or Max Kellerman. They arent even the Sun newspaper equivalent, they are way, way worse. They are low level trolls who will say absolutely anything against the grain to generate their own hype.
ok, USA today it is then
The paper of Woodward and Bernstein doing a lot of trolling too
1 Like
Rob Parker 
More credible than lying bill & tom
Football almost killed Darren Waller. Then, football saved Darren Waller
By Dan Pompei Dec 19, 2019
54 
ALAMEDA, Calif. — The morning sun has yet to show itself, but Darren Waller has begun making light of his own.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh.”
Then a pause.
“Ohhhhhhhhhh.”
Another pause.
“Mmmmmmmmmmm.”
Waller holds each chant for five seconds, listening to the sounds, focusing on the vibrations, detaching from feelings and thoughts. This goes on for 10 minutes or so.
“Before the day starts, you want to think your whole day through before you live it, or make a million decisions in your head that make you really anxious,” the Raiders tight end says. “With (chant meditation), I start my day at peace even if my day is full.”
Peace is essential to Waller, more so than it is to many because he hasn’t had it for most of his 27 years.
From the depths of addiction to the heights of achievement, from destroying himself to destroying defenses, Waller has traveled a path that is almost too incredible to be believed.
First, football almost killed him.
Then, football saved him.
Now, he wants to save others.
His story has three parts.
1. Football almost killed him
As a child of a stable, loving, two-parent family in a middle-class, mixed neighborhood in Cobb County, Atlanta, Waller wanted to impress others. He found one way to do that, probably the only way: playing football.
But he didn’t love football. He loved math and science. He enjoyed testing himself mentally and was placed in advanced classes. He started playing piano at age 3 (his great-grandfather is accomplished jazz pianist Fats Waller) and was considered a prodigy.
“That went out the window because it wasn’t cool,” Waller says. “The other black kids I was hanging out with, I was kind of being made fun of because I talked too proper, or I dressed the way I dressed… People used to get on me that I wasn’t black enough… So I went from (wanting) to do something with my mind and try to change the world, to just playing football.”
He still didn’t fit in, though. Lonely and depressed, he looked for a way to suppress his anxiety. When he was 16, he found what he was looking for in a medicine cabinet at a friend’s house.
Waller began using Percocet, a pain killer that contains the narcotic Oxycodone. Over time, he also used alcohol, weed, opiates and cocaine. “I’d take anything I could get my hands on,” he says. “If it could get me to a certain place I wanted to be, I was all in.”
He went to Georgia Tech on a football scholarship as a wide receiver. More interested in getting high than getting in the end zone, Waller never came close to fulfilling his potential there.
There were two suspensions for failed drug tests and two attempts at rehab. A third failed drug test was supposed to result in expulsion. Waller says he was using daily, and drug tested every Tuesday. He is sure he failed more than two tests.
Why wasn’t he expelled? “I feel like my senior year we had a really good team,” he says. “I was still doing the same things I was doing the year before.”
He estimates he failed tests in double digits in college, which is nothing compared to the number of tests he should have failed in the NFL. When Waller was drafted by the Ravens in the sixth round in 2015, he immediately went into the league’s substance program because of his failed tests in college. The NFL tested him two to three times a week, year-round, no matter where he was. “I’m failing every single one of those,” Waller says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 100 (failed tests) in the league.”
When he was with the Ravens, using was “priority No. 1” for him. “I would be one of the last people in (the facility) in the morning and one of the first people to leave because I didn’t want to really be there,” Waller says. “Being in the building gave me anxiety.”
He was living a secret life, or trying to. But he wasn’t fooling anyone. Some of his teammates even facilitated his habit. “I figured out the guys who smoked weed and asked who they got it from, and they would give me phone numbers,” he says. “Eventually, if I couldn’t get (drugs)… I was down in some of the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore, driving through neighborhoods trying to find it.”
Waller and another teammate would leave work, make their purchases, get high and play video games. “I never went anywhere, never wanted to be outside or be seen,” he says. “I was in my own room, laying there, laying in the dark, closed blinds.”
His performances were reflective of his lifestyle. “When I got on the field, I had this voice in the back of my mind that said I didn’t really respect myself,” Waller says “I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself. When things got tough, and I had to make something happen, I’d just kind of freeze up or psych myself out.”
Veteran tight end Ben Watson took an interest and kept telling Waller how good he could be. Coach John Harbaugh and then-general manager Ozzie Newsome appealed to him repeatedly, but in Waller’s unreasonable state, he felt like they were attacking him. He shut them off.
Waller was suspended the first four games of the 2016 season for violating the substance abuse policy. Nothing changed after his first suspension, and the league suspended him the entire 2017 season.
On Aug. 11, 2017, Waller, already intoxicated from alcohol, took what he thought was 100 milligrams of Percocet. It actually was Fentanyl.
For five hours, Waller sat in his car in a parking lot not far from the Ravens facility. His head was spinning and his stomach churning. He couldn’t move.
This was an overdose. This was rock bottom. This was just what Waller needed.
2. Football saved him
Waller eventually was able to drive himself back to his room after overdosing. He felt off for a couple of days, but never sought medical attention, and didn’t tell anyone what happened for months.
During this period, he started to open up to his parents, Dorian and Charlena Waller. They opened up to him too, and told him of a history of addiction on both sides of the family. “That kind of lit a spark in me,” Waller says. “And my love for them was renewed then.”
Waller already was suspended, so the only representatives of the Ravens who were allowed to talk to him were player engagement director Harry Swayne and team psychologist Trice Bent-Goodley. They had been working on earning his trust for a long time, and it was working.
“They were never judgmental,” he says. “They always somehow saw the good in me even when I couldn’t see it in myself.”
Waller listened when Swayne and Bent-Goodley, along with Oliver Walcott, his case manager from the NFL’s substance abuse program, suggested he go to Borden Cottage at McLean Hospital in Camden, Maine.
About a month after overdosing, he checked in to Borden Cottage for a 30-day stay. Waller had a different attitude from when he went to rehab previously. And he was in a different kind of place from the rehab centers he had been in before.
Borden Cottage is on a hilltop overlooking 14 picturesque acres, and Penobscot Bay. The facility accommodates only eight patients at a time, and offers yoga, swimming, a fitness center with a personal trainer, bowling, an art studio, a music studio, a library and a theater room.
“It was incredible,” Waller says. “From learning meditation to finally talking through and tapping into the pains of my past. There were painful moments, uncovering those things, revealing them, and seeing how ugly it made me on the inside. But as soon as I admitted it, I felt good and felt free. I wasn’t carrying a thousand-pound weight on my back wherever I went.”
Waller’s stay at Borden Cottage cost north of $60,000. The NFL paid for everything.
When he was released, he returned to Georgia and took a job stocking shelves at Sprouts Farmers Market. At Waller’s recovery meetings, his sponsor Charles helped him embrace the 12 steps that lead to the sunny side of the street. Charles also helped him heal the brokenness inside.
“He is a black man, perfect for me to be with and see there is no shame in thinking I’m not black enough,” Waller says. “I’m black enough just by being strong and trying to change the course of my family by being clean and being honest with myself. That’s what a man is in general. He helped me get over that. I was intimidated with black women. (I thought) a black woman would surely see I’m not black enough. He kind of helped me see I could date whoever I want or be around whoever I want.”
In 2018, the Ravens gave Waller another chance he probably didn’t deserve.
In practices, Ravens defenders couldn’t cover him. But the team had three other quality tight ends they could trust. Waller was put on the practice squad.
Three days after Thanksgiving, the Ravens were finishing their warmups for a game against the Raiders at M&T Bank Stadium. Some players who didn’t expect to play remained on the field to get a little work in. Raiders offensive coordinator Greg Olson hung around to watch Ravens backup quarterback Robert Griffin III. Griffin was throwing to Waller, who ran a deep go route into the end zone. Ravens cornerback Jimmy Smith, wearing earphones and in his own world, was plowed over by Waller.
Olson returned to the locker room and asked head coach Jon Gruden if he knew anything about Waller. “We don’t have anyone on our team who looks like that guy or runs like him,” Olson told Gruden.
After the game, Olson took a seat on the team plane next to Gruden, and Gruden told him, “We just signed the tight end you liked.”
Soon after, Waller landed in California for the first time in his life. His playbook was in his hands when he walked into the office of Raiders tight ends coach Frank Smith. Smith, who has friends who have struggled with addiction, knew there were more important things than learning the playbook. He told him to put it away.
They went to meet the Raiders player engagement director, the team psychologist, and Alex Cable, the son of offensive line coach Tom Cable. Alex has helped other athletes with recovery and was able to help build a support system for Waller.
They never talked about football that day. “It’s about showing you care and connecting as a person before you ever teach them a play,” Smith says. “I think that’s why he felt he’d have a chance to excel here, because we care about the person more than the player.”
Smith reached Waller in a way other coaches might not have been able to. He’s the type of coach who gets to know his players’ parents, and who has pictures of his players’ children in the team meeting room. “Hate and anger take you only so far,” Smith says. “Love and compassion and devotion will take you over the top.”
Even Gruden, known for giving into gloom now and then, has been all sparkle with Waller. “He was always encouraging me from the day I got here,” Waller says. “’We believe in you. You can do great things here.’ Every time he talked to me. I never had a coach talk to me like that before.”
Because Waller is the only tight end on the team who doesn’t play special teams, he and Smith meet one-on-one several days a week. And the conversation usually isn’t about football. “It is,” Smith says, “a chance for us to be human.”
Waller fits with the Raiders. “I felt that connection as soon as I came in,” he says. “It was a sense of comfort, like I’m not just a weirdo coming in here all alone. … It made it easier for me to transition and to want to do better because these people think highly of me and aren’t holding my past over my head.”
Olson says Waller is one of the most popular players — if not the most popular — on offense. The tight ends have dinner together at least once a week. Waller is part of a bible study group that meets on Mondays and includes quarterback Derek Carr.
“You know what’s cool is he’s very open during the bible study,” Carr says. “I’ve been around some guys knowing they are going through some stuff, and they don’t say anything. … There have been times he’s mentioned something, and I have a scripture or story that helped me and I give it to him.”
Waller had a girlfriend last year, and he says he was not being faithful to her. He didn’t feel right about it and admitted it during bible study. “(Carr) spoke some truths, (gave me) reasons to have confidence in myself and believe that God is trying to make me better,” Waller says. “He made me realize I don’t have to keep giving into temptation.”
Waller thought he never wanted to become a father because he didn’t want children who were cursed with his demons. Carr talked him through it, and Waller had a change of heart.
A relapse is not a worry, according to those who are close to Waller. But he is a work in progress.
He still feels loneliness at times. He lives his life differently from most of his single peers. His family members are on the other side of the country.
He was voted a Pro Bowl alternate this week, and he has 1,001 receiving yards, more than any tight end except Travis Kelce of the Chiefs. But Waller is not as confident as his achievements suggest he should be.
“I spent almost 25 years of my life thinking I wasn’t good enough,” he says. “On the field, it was like, ‘Don’t drop this, don’t drop this, don’t drop this.’ Instead of being like, ‘I’m going to make this play.’ There may be a day when I slip back to my old ways. If I drop one pass at practice and I’m just like, ‘Man, what am I doing!’ Before that would last for a few weeks. Now it may last for a few minutes, or maybe an hour. Then I’ll come out of it.”
Darren Waller, Oakland Raider, is very different from Darren Waller, Baltimore Raven. The Baltimore version of Waller did what was necessary to get by. The Oakland version of Waller immerses himself in football. He gets to the facility early and stays late. He watches more tape, asks more questions, stretches more, gets more massages, and takes more cold tubs.
It shows. Gruden says the 6-6, 266-pound Waller might be “the most impressive athlete that I’ve seen in this league,” and he clearly expects greatness from him.
Waller doesn’t play football to impress others anymore, which may be why he impresses so many. “Now it’s like I’m tapped into the joy football brings, the challenge of it,” he says. “Every day I have to be ready mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to put myself into the game and not go back to that mindset. … I look to have fun.”
It isn’t just that Waller is killing it on the field. His skin is clearer. His eyes are brighter. His posture is better. He is more engaging. His relationships with family members are better.
Waller feels a debt of gratitude to the NFL.
Where would he be without football?
“I think the same habits would be happening,” he says. “And I’d still be going about my life thinking that was the way to have peace. I can’t say I’d be clean if not for the NFL and the opportunity to go to rehab.”
3. Now he wants to save others
“Today is Aug. 11,” Waller said in the third episode of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” last summer. “On the 12th, I’ll be clean for two years.”
“Hard Knocks” introduced Waller’s struggle to many and made him aware of the power of his story. Gruden calls it “the greatest story in the game this year.”
“Where he’s come from … a lot of people don’t make it through that story,” Carr says. “The fact that he’s come up on the other side, hopefully that helps other people. It’s not just about him. He can have a real impact on a lot of people.”
Waller stood in front of the Raiders’ rookies and spoke from the heart of where he has been. There is no interview he will turn down. He has aligned with a speaker’s bureau so he can keep talking about it in the offseason.
“It reinforces why I’m doing it in my mind, what value it brings to my life,” Waller says. “The more I speak it out loud, it lets me know I’m not living a lie.”
Waller tries to go to two recovery meetings a week. He bounces from Alameda to Hayward to San Leandro and Castro Valley, deriving — and delivering — hope and strength from people like him.
He still is drug tested two to three times weekly and says he has not consumed drugs or alcohol since his overdose. He says he won’t take anything stronger than an anti-inflammatory.
Waller’s teammates, meanwhile, use addictive opioids and smoke weed. He sees it.
The first drug Waller used was Percocet, but he thinks marijuana is a gateway drug, “It leads you to being around certain people,” he says. “It always ends up that high is not enough. You always feel you have to elevate it when you do it so much. That’s why I feel it is a gateway drug.”
He believes it can be OK for some, but not others. “If you can handle your day-to-day activities and manage them in a responsible manner while still doing it, by all means, use it if you feel it helps you,” he says. “If it’s something that takes you away from being responsible or takes you away from putting forth your best effort as far as work ethic, or if it gets in the way of family relationships, I feel you should re-evaluate.”
In Waller’s new life, there is less time for video games and Netflix. There is more time reading, listening to podcasts, and writing, recording and producing music.
The music on his albums, “Wall Street” and “Better Call Wall,” is mostly rap, but his musical tastes have evolved. He used to be all rhyme, beats and turntabling. Now he’s more piano, horns and strings.
“The artists I listened to growing up, I can’t even listen to anymore,” says Waller. “It’s like having someone in my ear talking to me about using drugs all day, or getting money, or impressing people, or using women in a certain type of way. … I’m filtering out things that aren’t good for me.”
Waller also is welcoming things that are good for him. “As soon as I started turning over my will and my life to God, things turned around,” he says. “God has a bigger plan for me than I have for myself.”
That plan includes a foundation, maybe opening recovery centers, or programs for kids that would try to change the meaning of what is cool. Life is happening fast for him, and he is sorting through the possibilities.
Las Vegas will be an interesting home for Waller when the Raiders move there in 2020. Known as the American city that most appeals to the dark side of the soul, Vegas offers temptation and trouble, in various forms, to anyone who seeks them.
Initially, Waller felt anxiety about becoming a resident of “Sin City.” He has been there twice, but hardly remembers his visits because he blacked out for most of his time there.
But now he is thinking about Vegas as the place he is destined to be, a place he can make a compelling statement. “He’s going to carry on this mission in a city that’s known for debauchery, and he’s going to be a beacon of light,” Smith says. “He’s going to help a tremendous amount of people once we get to Las Vegas.”
Waller already has started helping people.
Steve Fowler and Waller knew each other from the neighborhood when they were kids. They didn’t become friends until they connected when Waller was in Baltimore.
Steve Fowler and Darren Waller in the midst of their addiction and wasted. (Courtesy of Steve Fowler)
“Something drew me to him,” says Fowler, who would stay up all weekend using cocaine and alcohol. “I feel now it was a spiritual thing.”
After Waller emerged from Borden Cottage a new man, Fowler says he still was “so hopeless, spiraling in a hurry.” Waller took him to Hilton Head in the summer of 2018.
“There was a light that was shining about him,” Fowler says of that trip. “He was having a blast sober. … It was a huge eye-opener. Probably a week later … I rolled out of bed at 4 in the morning and wanted to kill myself. I called him. I told him what was going on. He talked me out of everything. He walked me through the whole day until I could get in the treatment facility later that afternoon.”
Fowler says he now has been sober for more than 500 days. “If I hadn’t built the relationship with him, I’d still be out there,” Fowler says.
Waller and Fowler now, sober. (Courtesy of Steve Fowler)
Finding the end zone is great for Waller. Finding more Fowlers would be better.
“There are people who are hiding and suffering in silence,” he says. “If I can help them get over that, that’s the biggest thing I can ever do, better than anything I can do on the field.”
There is a peace about Darren Waller now.
It radiates to all those around him
1 Like
3 Likes
What a play, had to watch it twice to see the actual pass to the TD scorer. 
Jameis is having an especially Jameis game
2 Likes
He is a disaster. They just cannot bring him back next year. Turnover machine.
You’re happy with that tho…
He’ll still throw for three TD’s yet. There is an awful lot going on in this game, Arians is having conniptions again.
And rightly so. That should have been a fumble recovery for Tampa
Winston is a fucking joke.
Incredible half of football. Incredibly sloppy but great entertainment.
Jameis is box-office
2 Likes
Should have been picked off for a 4th time