After spending more than a year in retirement, Darren Waller finally returned to the NFL on Monday night and he made a huge splash. In his first game with the Miami Dolphins, Waller came out and caught two touchdown passes against the New York Jets.Â
Waller’s first score of the game came on a four-yard pass from Tua Tagovailoa that gave the Dolphins an early 10-0 lead.Â
Waller then followed that up in the third quarter with a nine-yard touchdown reception that put the Dolphins up 17-3.Â
The tight end caught a total of three passes for 27 yards through the first three quarters.Â
The Dolphins’ new star is having a productive night that didn’t even seem possible just six months ago.Â
Waller’s appearance on Monday night came 631 days after he played in his last NFL game, which came with the New York Giants during Week 18 of the 2023 season. Five months after that game was played, Waller announced that he had decided to retire at the age of 31.Â
The former Pro Bowler ended up sitting out the entire 2024 season and it didn’t look like he was going to return to football, but then a funny thing happened: The Giants decided to trade him. Waller agreed to come out of retirement as part of the July 1 trade, which saw the Giants send the tight end to Miami in exchange for a 2026 sixth-round pick.Â
The Dolphins’ didn’t activate Waller until late August and after that happened, it took his body to re-acclimate to the NFL.Â
“You can’t always predict how your body will respond from having time away,” Waller said in late August. “Mostly, it’s just my body responding well and, in some ways, it didn’t, so it was just like being cautious in that way to, I guess, look at the bigger picture as opposed to maybe rushing in to get ready for the very beginning.”
During the first three weeks of the season, Waller wasn’t on the field. He was listed inactive for each game while dealing with a hip injury. On Monday night, he was finally ready to make his debut.Â
The Dolphins are certainly a team where a tight end can have some success. During the 2024 season, Jonnu Smith led the team in receptions (88) and receiving touchdowns (8) while finishing second in receiving yards (884). After Smith got traded to the Steelers on June 30, the Dolphins went out an acquired Waller just one day later.Â
Waller finished with over 1,000 yards receiving in both 2019 and 2020 while playing for the Raiders and even made the Pro Bowl in 2020. In 2023, he finished with 552 receiving yards despite playing for a Giants offense that simply wasn’t very good.Â
In Miami, he’ll have a chance to put up some big numbers and he’s already off to a hot start.Â
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