considering retirement early<\/a> in that 2023 season, unhappy with his role. And it wasn’t unusual for Waller to walk away. He would have been entering his age-32 season, and plenty of players at that age are considering calling it a career, especially at the tight end position.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
But Waller returned, Miami traded for him and after missing the Dolphins’ first three games due to injury, he made a big impact.<\/p>\n
Waller reminded everyone on Monday night against the New York Jets that he was back, as he scored a pair of touchdowns.<\/p>\n
In the second quarter Tua Tagovailoa threw him a jump ball on fourth-and-goal in the back of the end zone and Waller showed off the athleticism that made him a Pro Bowl tight end with the Raiders. He went up for the 4-yard score. That gave the Dolphins a 10-0 lead.<\/p>\n
It was Waller’s first NFL touchdown since Oct. 22, 2023. There was no reason to believe, until a few months ago, that he would ever catch another touchdown in the NFL.<\/p>\n
Waller added to his night in the third quarter. He caught a 9-yard touchdown pass to give the Dolphins a 17-3 lead. It was his first two touchdown game since Dec. 6, 2020.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Waller had an unusual story. He was a sixth-round pick of the Baltimore Ravens, and was suspended multiple times for violations of the NFL’s substance-abuse policy. He talked openly about his battles with addiction as he got another chance with the Raiders and became a breakout star, peaking in 2019 and 2020 when he had back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. His lone season with the Giants, after he was traded by the Raiders, went terribly and then he retired.<\/p>\n
There was no reason then to believe Waller would ever be a factor in the NFL again. At age 33, he’s officially back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Miami Dolphins traded for Darren Waller this summer, it was probably the first time you’d thought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[111441,8849,46821,1322,977,5702,349,30170,99,51568,1835],"class_list":["post-191229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-alec-ingold","tag-baltimore-ravens","tag-darren-waller","tag-miami-dolphins","tag-new-york-giants","tag-new-york-jets","tag-nfl","tag-raiders","tag-sports","tag-touchdown-pass","tag-tua-tagovailoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}