Su'a Cravens shares his side of the story as he gets a fresh start with the Broncos

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Everyone who’s heard of Su’a Cravens has an opinion on the incredibly physically gifted 22-year-old football player.

Before forming those opinions, however, he would ask you to hear his side of the story.

“I think there’s a false narrative on what exactly happened,” he said Monday, referring to what happened last year during his final year with the Washington Redskins. “Right now my focus is just on being a Denver Bronco. One day I’ll be able to speak a little further on that.”

After contemplating retirement days before the start of the 2017 season and leaving the team, Cravens was eventually placed on the reserve/left squad list, forcing him to miss the entire season. Because of that, many people have said Cravens quit on Washington last year. He doesn’t believe the word quit is fair.

“I’m not a quitter. I’m not a guy who lacks love for the game,” he said, quickly jumping on the question. “I definitely don’t know where the ‘quitting in college’ came from, but like I said, I’m here to play for the Broncos and do whatever I can to help this team win games.”

You see, Cravens was dealing with a then-undiagnosed condition called post-concussion syndrome — something his doctors said wasn’t allowing him to think properly. After stepping away from the game, Cravens was finally diagnosed, yet not medically cleared to play football until December.

Cravens made multiple trips to Pittsburgh to meet with “Micky” Collins, the Director of the University of Pittsburgh School of the Health Sciences Sports Medicine Concussion Program. After rigorous testing and rehab, Collins finally gave the young safety the green light to return to football whenever the opportunity arose.

“At first I just thought that something was wrong with me, something’s not right, and I didn’t feel the same,” he said, divulging into his past. “Once he explained, ‘This is why you feel this way,’ he’d ask me questions, I’d tell him, ‘Yes,’ and he’d say, ‘Well that’s a correlation to this.’ Everything started making sense, and once we started working on it progressively,, it I got better and better.”

The syndrome Cravens was dealing with didn’t just affect his decision to play fooball; it impacted the rest of his life as well.

“I was going through something that I wasn’t even aware I was going through,” he explained. ” The mindset that I had last year was just completely different from how I am now. Once I got cleared, I took a step back and looked at the way I was acting and the way I was treating my loved ones. The way my whole thought process was, it was a stranger. It was just crazy that I didn’t realize that I was in a predicament I was completely unaware of.”

Now, as he’s back to recognizing the person looking at him in the mirror, his attitude toward football is the same it was before his struggles: An unwavering love for the game.

After opening up that there was a point in his life when he thought he was done with football, he quickly followed that up by saying his love and “need to be on the field and be with [his] brothers” never went away.

“I’ve always been excited about football; I’m a competitor. I’ve loved football my whole life,” he said with pep in his voice. “Sometimes some things change, and sometimes you’ve got to be mature about situations. When it came to last year, it wasn’t really about what I wanted, it was about what I needed to do.”

In fact, now that he knows what life without football is like, he has an appreciation for the game that he believes few have. That mindset, in his eyes, will make him even more dedicated to the game moving forward.

“I will never take that for granted again—practice, or when you don’t feel like going in and rehabbing your body or icing it and things like that—I’m 100 percent committed to it,” he said, conveying that same message multiples times throughout his 10 minutes press conference.

No matter what Cravens says, there will still be people who say he quit on his team last year. While Washington’s executives could certainly have those feelings, his now-former teammates didn’t feel that way, according to Cravens.

“I never really stopped communication with them; we’ve always been close,” he said, speaking about his relationship with his Washington teammates. “I’ve been talking to guys like Mason Foster, Will Compton, Preston Smith, Anthony Lanier, Junior Galette and just guys that I’ve always had close relationships with… There were never bad ties over there.”

In the eyes of the Redskins, however, it was time to move on. Last Wednesday, he woke up to the news — quickly followed up by a phone call from John Elway — letting him know the Denver Broncos would be his next home.

While Denver only gave up the equivalent of a fourth-round pick to acquire the former 2016 second-round pick, Cravens truly believes he ended up in the right situation for him to continue his career.

“I wanted a fresh start just because I don’t like the way things happened,” he said, looking toward the future. “The fact that the Broncos gave me this fresh start and a chance to basically create a new image of myself, I just can’t wait. I’m thankful for the opportunity.”

Until the pads are strapped, and collisions on the field are happening, people will still look back on what happened last year and question his desire and motives. However, he’s not worried about his first hit changing his mindset toward the game.

“I’m aware of the situation that I was in, and I’m aware of the dangers of the game,” Cravens said, showing wisdom for a player entering his third year in the NFL. “I’ve experienced it first-hand, and I’m still willing to go out there and put everything I have on the line.”