![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/D.-Weber_Rey-Maualuga-SI-Cover.jpg\")
<\/a>Rey Maualuga\u2019s SI cover with USC teammates Brian Cushing, left, and Clay Matthews III, right (Photo courtesy SI)<\/p>\nLos Angeles was the next stop where Rey was a unanimous All-American and Bednarik Award winner on a USC linebacking crew that may have been the best in college football history and finally on to Cincinnati and the NFL\u2019s Bengals for eight years where he was named captain before a final year in Miami.<\/p>\n
Twenty years of his life, from Pop Warner football to the NFL. Rey was a linebacker. Tough as they come. Biggest hitter in the college game.<\/p>\n
And then? Well, more of that in a bit.<\/p>\n
But now? All you have to do is look at that Instagram photo Rey posted in August with his three daughters and his son.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a full-time dad now. And not missing a minute of it. The big smile gives it away.<\/p>\n
No longer is Rey ruled by the out-of-control drinking that culminated in his 2021 sentencing to 120 days in the Kenton County jail after the last of multiple incidents of driving his car under the influence through yards and mailboxes and parked cars in a couple of late-night episodes in his suburban Villa Hills neighborhood in Northern Kentucky. TMZ then, as only it can, headlined that Rey \u201ccould go to jail for 10 years\u201d before the felonies were pleaded down with conditions.<\/p>\n
Nor is there a thought of the arrests for bar fights \u2014 the last in 2017 in Miami, which marked the end of Rey\u2019s NFL career.<\/p>\n
Nor is he still doing the out-of-control eating that had Rey \u201cdoor dashing\u201d his way up to 380 pounds after playing at 260. \u201cI carried it well,\u201d he says with a grin, \u201cI didn\u2019t really look 380,\u201d as he shows you the photo of a super-sized Rey. He\u2019s right. He didn\u2019t, but it was his \u201cfat face,\u201d he says correctly, that took the brunt of the weight hit, making him almost unrecognizable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d order a whole fried chicken \u2013 and a second meal for midnight,\u201d Rey says. \u201cI was bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that was then.<\/p>\n
As for the drinking, that was then as well. No more. Rey\u2019s August Instagram was to celebrate \u201cfour years of my sobriety,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
He recalls the words of his USC linebackers\u2019 coach Ken Norton Jr. about how you\u2019ll finally get to a point where \u201cyou\u2019re sick and tired of being sick and tired.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEleven years of preparing to get to the big show and then nine years there and, call it an excuse for my drinking and partying, but I\u2019d tell myself I did my time, these are the fruits of my labor,\u201d Rey would rationalize. \u201cI don\u2019t have to go to camp. I don\u2019t have to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what was he to do?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know what to do next,\u201d Rey says, even though they often warn NFL\u2019ers that this time would come. \u201cYou\u2019re so used to doing it one way and now you have all that free time and when I didn\u2019t have my daughter (13-year-old Avayah in shared custody with her mother), . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, he only knew one way then.<\/p>\n
That thinking carried over to his house. \u201cUnique,\u201d Rey calls the 6,700-square-foot place he bought in 2015 on a quiet Kentucky street overlooking the Ohio River that ends in a cemetery on property awarded to a Revolutionary War general by Virginia in the late 1700\u2019s before Kentucky even existed as a state.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s just say that if you were driving down one of those mansion-lined Beverly Hills streets and came to a palace built by an oil billionaire from the Middle East, this house would be it. And as much as it might stand out in Beverly Hills, this is Northern Kentucky we\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is different,\u201d Rey says of the home built by legendary nightclub owner Richard Schilling. But to Rey\u2019s thinking, it was perfect with its large swimming pool in the gated courtyard with \u201ca basement as big as the entire house,\u201d he adds, \u201cit looked like a great place to party.\u201d<\/p>\n And now, no more of that.<\/p>\n \u201cMy girl was pregnant,\u201d he says of the mother of his two youngest children and his partner, Ashley Reed, a nurse, as he was exiting jail. And how much her influence and willingness to change her life and help him, has mattered in his success in his path to sobriety.<\/p>\n But he was still eating.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d eat my kids\u2019 food, drink their sodas. Maybe I wasn\u2019t drinking but I\u2019d eat seven cookies at a time like it was no big deal. And don\u2019t talk about fast food.\u201d<\/p>\n And then that \u201cdad\u201d thing kicked in for Rey, who had always had it, renting apartments in suburban Cincinnati to be near his oldest daughter\u2019s school for when he would have custody of her.<\/p>\n \u201cI truly believe that if you don\u2019t want to make a change for yourself, things will never get better,\u201d Rey writes in commemorating the anniversary. \u201cYou have to want it. People can\u2019t make you do anything. At the end of the day, if you don\u2019t want to be sober, it won\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Rey wanted to be sober. \u201cIt\u2019s that simple,\u201d he says. \u201cI am sober.\u201d<\/p>\n And motivated. \u201cMy kids are all I need to remind me why I don\u2019t want to drink anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n Rey wanted to be a full-time dad. And now he is. A dad of four. There\u2019s Avayah, then Ashley\u2019s daughter Ryanne, 12 \u2013 in their blended family. \u201cMy bonus child,\u201d he says. Then he and Ashley have daughter Dylanne, 3; and son Malosi, 1.<\/p>\n Rey, looking now for all the world like he could still play for USC, starts the day with a workout, then it\u2019s dad duties the rest of the day. Has he thought about coaching? Or life counseling with his own experience as a guide for NFL guys like him who come to the end of their playing days?<\/p>\n Nope. Not yet. \u201cThere are so many things I missed out on my first daughter,\u201d Rey says of the football time demands in-season. \u201cI only saw her on my off days. I was just always out of the picture then. Since I\u2019ve been sober, I\u2019ve been able to catch the moment every day \u2014 changing diapers, bottle feeding, putting the babies to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n But for a football guy of Samoan heritage, one of the seminal moments for Rey was the USC game at Virginia when Hall of Famer Troy Polamalu came down from Pittsburgh and shook his hand. \u201cTroy was like royalty to Polynesian kids,\u201d said Rey, who would one day accompany Troy to Samoa for the football camp they hosted for youngsters there. \u201cHow do you talk to greatness?\u201d<\/p>\n As for his own career, and the 120 NFL games he played with 607 tackles, seven interceptions, four sacks, 22 passes defended, six forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries in addition to five playoff games from 2011 to 2015 with the Bengals with 40 tackles, Rey\u2019s not sure how to grade or evaluate it.<\/p>\n \u201cDan, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m glad I had the opportunity. I feel like I didn\u2019t accomplish what I envisioned for myself. There are so many \u2018what ifs\u2019 \u2013 if things happened differently, if I played somewhere else. Why are some people more successful than when they were in college and some not? Is it the schemes?\u201d<\/p>\n Rey makes it clear, he\u2019s not excusing how it played out.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened happened,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is what it is.\u201d <\/p>\n But the NFL is not Rey\u2019s concern now. His house full of kids is. But it\u2019s not just the dad role. Rey is also a son who was able in June to gift his mom, Tina, the new house in Eureka that he\u2019s always wanted her to have.<\/p>\n \u201cFinally,\u201d Rey wrote his mother. \u201cIt took so long because I had to face my demons before I could worry about anything else. I had to find peace within myself.\u201d<\/p>\n And now with his sobriety having reached four years \u201cand for God giving me another chance, I had to grow up \u2026 thank you for loving me when the devil got a hold of me, for loving me when I tarnished our last name. Thank you for everything you gave up to let me be who I am today\u2026 Like my Dad used to say: \u2018Be smart in the head and you\u2019ll be rewarded with good things\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Rey is now living up to the word \u201cDad\u201d he would paint under each eye for USC games after his dad died of brain cancer when he was a freshman.<\/p>\n In so many ways now, Rey isn\u2019t playing Dad, or even playing for Dad anymore. He is Dad.<\/p>\n Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com<\/a>. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 11 years, Rey Maualuga prepared for the position he\u2019d play in life. And in football. From his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[5311,59567,228,227,256,2296,56983,7,6,59568,59569,18584,28269],"class_list":{"0":"post-321592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-all-american","9":"tag-bednarik-award-winner","10":"tag-bengals","11":"tag-cincinnati","12":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","13":"tag-cincinnatibengals","14":"tag-dan-weber","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-rey-maualuga","18":"tag-sobriety","19":"tag-troy-polamalu","20":"tag-villa-hills"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115100607455906634","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Rey Maualuga\u2019s instagram post marking four years of sobriety, with his children Avayah, far left, Dylanne, Malosi and Ryanne. (Image provided)<\/p>\n<\/a>Rey Maualuga at USC with the word \u201cDAD\u201d painted under each eye (Photo courtesy USC)<\/p>\n