Chris Long Grows Into His Shadow

Chris Long turned a stellar career at Virginia into status as a high draft pick of the St. Louis Rams.
Photo: Grant Halverson

Andy Bitter
The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Virginia

CHARLOTTESVILLE, N.C.--Diane and Howie Long's plan was an ingenious bit of parenting that just so happened to backfire.

Feeling some guilt for having moved their sons from their Los Angeles-area home to Charlottesville in 1994, they relented and let their oldest son Chris, then 9, play youth league football.

It wasn't Howie's preference. He had just wrapped up a 13-year Hall of Fame career with the Los Angeles Raiders. He knew the brutality of the sport and would have liked to see his son pursue a different path. But they had made a promise.

No big deal, they thought. Let him play. He'll get hit once and hate it. Then if he quits, it's his decision, not theirs.

"I was like, 'Oh, he'll get his nose bloodied. He'll come home and not want to play,'" Howie said, laughing as he reminisced. "Obviously, I was wrong."

They had just learned what countless numbers of people in football circles would come to know over the next 13 years--never underestimate the resolve of Chris Long.

Long is Virginia football. He's beloved in Charlottesville, where the line to get his autograph at Meet the Team Day stretched out of the stadium. He's universally respected on the football field, where he has emerged from the sizeable shadow cast from his supremely talented father to make his own name.

He comes across as the All-American kid, a consummate leader in everything he does, from the field to the weight room, the classroom to the media room. Everyone has wonderful things to say about him.

And here's the thing. All of it appears to be true.

"(He's made) the ultimate impression," Virginia head coach Al Groh said. "He's everything a coach would want. He's got a passion for football. He's a great team guy. He's got a tremendous work ethic. He's got skills. You name them, he's got what you want."

It wasn't always that way. Despite his immediate love for the game, Long was not preternaturally talented. He was, by his own admission, bad. When he was 10, his parents didn't let him play, punishment for his constant tormenting of his younger brother, Kyle (yes, the Florida State baseball recruit who is now 6-foot-7).

He shaped up and resumed playing the game the next year, still trying to play catch-up skills-wise. John Blake, his coach at St. Anne's-Belfield, first met Long when he was in sixth grade and described him as a "gangly kid that couldn't walk and chew gum."

"It was pretty ugly sometimes back then," Long said. "I didn't always think I was very good."

Things started to click once he got to STAB. Long grew into his body. A breakout season seemed like only a matter of time. It happened when he was a junior in 2002.