The one thing wide receiver Darnell Mooney has craved throughout his football career is respect, and he has rarely gotten it.
His high school career wasn’t good enough to get major scholarship offers despite playing near Alabama and Auburn. The electricity he showed at Tulane was unconvincing, and he waited until nearly the end of the fifth round to get drafted. The Bears actually took two other players in the fifth round before grabbing Mooney at No. 173 overall.
He went 25th among receivers, but ranks third in his class in catches (143), sixth in yards receiving (1,694) and seventh in touchdown receptions (eight) heading into the game against the Packers on Sunday. He had just one catch for eight yards in the opener, but passing was problematic overall as rain saturated Soldier Field.
Given that he’s done nothing but ascend, it seems like the football world would eventually have to concede that Mooney is the real thing. But even after a strong rookie season and putting up 1,055 in the Bears’ dreadful offense last season, he is still mostly dismissed as a legitimate No. 1 receiver.
He wants to change minds, but he’s beginning to accept that he might not be able to.
“I want to have my name known — that’s respect in the league,” Mooney told the Sun-Times. “I’m here and I’m gonna be here for a while and I’m gonna be a threat. I want that type of respect.
“But I know what I can do. I have respect for myself. I can’t do anything about it if I don’t get respect from others, but it would be a nice thing to have. Somebody’s always going to have something to say, regardless of where you’re at. I’m sure guys are saying something now about Tom Brady. It’s always something.”
The NFL is full of cautionary tales about gifted players who were filtered out for reasons that had nothing to do with talent. Mooney’s story is the opposite. It’s an illustration of how to set oneself apart in a hyper-competitive field in which being fast and strong are prerequisites just to get in the door.
Everybody has those qualities. But not everybody knows how to use them.
Case in point: As a rookie, Mooney immediately overtook Anthony Miller. Miller was every bit his equal physically, but was known for his shaky grasp of the playbook — his coaches said it publicly. Meanwhile, the staff immediately raved about Mooney mastering it.
“If you don’t know what’s going on out there, you really can’t move as fast as you want to,” Mooney said. “If you’re messing up mentally, it’s going to be tough at any job you want to do in life.”
Mooney said he learned that professionalism in high school, but his coach, Matt Scott said, “He was already like that... I trusted Darnell as much as I trusted the coaches.”
Confidence is another factor. While Mooney has always faced external doubt, saying college and pro teams misjudged him as “too small and fragile,” he has never wavered. Breaking 1,000 yards last season and taking over as the Bears’ top receiver has only further emboldened him.
“Close to the end of last year I felt like, ‘Alright, I’m here now; Y’all gotta deal with me,’” he said. “Now it’s kind of a reset: Prove yourself all over. But I think that’s gonna be an every-year thing. But I’m gonna be ready.”
