Bubba Wallace is the Ryan Leaf of NASCAR
1,383The late 1990's saw the career of a promising NFL quarterback fall apart almost as quickly as it began, due to a string of public incidents and noticeable attitude issues that overshadowed his college football accomplishments. Nobody in the San Diego Chargers organization recognized the now seemingly obvious signs quick enough, and at the conclusion of the 1998 NFL draft, they were left with a walking PR disaster as their starting quarterback who departed almost as quickly as he arrived.
Darrell Wallace Jr's NASCAR career has followed a similar trajectory. The moderately successful Truck/Grand National Series driver has just two wins to his name after six years at the pro level, and routinely finds himself in an impressively wide variety of bizarre, Leaf-like situations. Situations that, seemingly nobody has bothered to connect the dots and spot the obvious pattern spanning close to a decade.
Wallace continues to land major opportunities at the top level of auto racing in North America, and even has his own Netflix Series; a carefully crafted marketing push desperately trying to hide that this dude has major attitude/character issues and is basically Ryan Leaf on wheels.