Raiders’ Darren Waller overcomes physical and mental battles to return

By Case Keefer (contact)

Friday, Jan. 14, 2022 | 2 a.m.

As an outspoken mental-health advocate and survivor of addiction, Darren Waller often shares how such battles are never-ending struggles while doing community outreach.

The Raiders’ tight end will have another example to draw upon from his own experiences with the way this season has gone. Waller had missed five straight games, and the second half of a Thanksgiving win over the Cowboys, before last Sunday’s playoff-clinching win over the Chargers with back and knee injuries as well as a COVID-19 bout.

The mental hurdles proved as challenging as the physical issues during his time away from the field.

“I’m still trying to shed my old thinking patterns, so when I’m not out there, I can think these thoughts of like, ‘The team is balling without me being in there. Am I useless?’” Waller said in a virtual news conference earlier this week. “There are just like these irrational thoughts.”

Waller talked with his therapist and immersed himself in coping mechanisms liking studying his playbook and working on his music to help with his comeback. It’s a comeback he and the Raiders hope is fully completed at 1:30 Saturday afternoon when they kick off a wild-card playoff against the Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati.

Although Waller played last week, he wasn’t fully recovered and had only two catches for 22 yards against the Chargers. He participated in every practice this week at the Raiders’ Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center headquarters in Henderson, albeit in a limited fashion but also one that saw him methodically ramping up his repetitions in each session.

“He looked better this week than he did a week ago,” Raiders interim coach Rich Bisaccia said on Thursday, “so hopefully it’ll show up in the game.”

The Raiders have been widely praised for reaching the playoffs despite so many factors conspiring against them this season, with Waller’s absence standing out as another underrated obstacle they’ve had to climb. He hadn’t missed a game in his first two full seasons with the Raiders and set the franchise’s all-time single-season reception record with 108 catches last year.

That put the 29-year-old Waller’s stock at an all-time high going into the season as Las Vegas centered its offense on him with then-coach Jon Gruden calling him the best player he’s ever coached. The early returns were strong, as Waller had 10 catches for 105 yards and a touchdown in a Week 1 overtime victory over the Ravens and kept being a significant contributor for the first month and a half of the season.

But then the injuries started hitting with Waller being a surprise late scratch in a Week 7 win over the Eagles. He came back after the bye week and played in three straight games — including a Week 11 loss to the Bengals that saw him haul in seven catches for 116 yards — before going into the Cowboys’ game hurt and aggravating his injuries with an early hard hit.

Las Vegas’ offense looked lost without Waller at first, dropping two straight games to Washington and Kansas City where it scored only 24 total points. But a four-game win streak to reach the playoffs followed, and included Hunter Renfrow filling Waller’s role as the first passing option.

Renfrow even threatened Waller’s receptions record before finishing with 103 catches on the year.

“You want to go out there and make all these things happen but at the same time, I don’t have to go out there and do it all by myself and just realize that as long as I do my role, I have value whether I’m touching the ball or not touching the ball,” Waller said. “I have value in knowing that I contribute a big part to what this team does. It was tough for me to come back in and be like, ‘Let’s take things as they are, let’s move our way back to the game and get comfortable again but there also has to be a sense of urgency.’ It was a little difficult to prepare for that mentally.”

Teammates have also done their best in keeping Waller’s spirits up. Tight end Foster Moreau has constantly praised Waller for how much help he’s provided while he filled in full-time without him.

Quarterback Derek Carr said the Raiders had “contingency plans” for how healthy Waller felt going into last week’s game and presumably the same will be true against the Bengals. Carr and Waller didn’t have their timing down against the Chargers, which was understandable given how little the latter had practiced.

Maybe that changes after Bisaccia said Waller ran more red-zone and full-team drills on Thursday in the team’s final practice before they leave for Cincinnati on Friday. Waller’s mindset certainly has changed, as he said he was feeling better mentally after returning and at peace with how the season has played out.

“I feel like things happened the way they were supposed to happen for me and my life and there were lessons I took from it and I got great work at just being patient,” he said. “But I’m glad my body healed up some and I’m good enough to go out there and help this team go where we want to go.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or