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Former Giants TE Darren Waller Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Former NY Giants TE Darren Waller on Decision to Come Out of Retirement

Originally posted on New York Giants on SI
By Stephen Lebitsch | Last updated Jul 25, 2025 3:00 AM ET

A little over a year ago, former New York Giants tight end Darren Waller decided to hang up his cleats following his lone season in the Big Apple. Thirteen months later, he is returning with a new team, the Miami Dolphins, and a fresh perspective on life and the game.

Waller, who initially retired from the NFL as a member of the Giants back on June 9th, 2024, and was building his brand in the rap music space, elected to return to the sport for what would be his ninth season and join the Dolphins for his latest and potentially final chapter.

The Giants, who still owned Waller's rights due to him being only two years into a three-year, $51 million extension he had signed with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022 before being traded to New York, agreed to ship the tight end to Miami along with a seventh-round pick in exchange for a conditional sixth-round pick in return.

The 32-year-old veteran arrived in South Florida on Tuesday for the start of training camp with the Dolphins, where he shared with the local media just how his sudden itch to rejoin the league came into being from a personal moment.

"The timing of it happened to be when I called (agent Drew Rosenhaus) and was like, you know, I'm reaching this point in just my life journey where I feel like it'd be something that I want to do to come back to football. And this is a place where, you know, I'd want to do it," Waller said during in his introductory press conference.

"I was content in my retirement, but I also felt like this was an opportunity for me to, if this is my last chapter, playing football, to close it in a way that's different than I did before and one that allows me to tap into the joy of why I started doing it in the first place."

Waller revealed that he had a few select moments last season when he would be watching games with friends and experience strange incidents of missing it, only to remember the times when it gave him joy to strap on the helmet and shoulder pads and live out his dreams as a pro athlete.

Still, it wasn't always like that for Waller when he was still an active participant with the Giants. Just one month earlier, Waller had gone public to make comments about how he began to experience a fall from grace with football during the 2023 season.

Jamie Germano/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / USA TODAY NETWORK

It was during the Giants' Week 6 primetime affair with the Buffalo Bills that Waller realized his state of mind was no longer focused on the action happening between the hash marks, and it was time to retire.

Waller was also dealing with a bevy of personal issues, the direst being a severe medical emergency he later shared that he suffered that November while he was on injured reserve.

There was a lack of happiness with what Waller was able to do on the field for the Giants as well.

In 12 games played with the franchise, the tight end compiled 52 receptions for 552 yards, with the latter stat marking his second-highest total since 2021. Still, he was only found once in the endzone in that entire span, a disappointment for a player who held two 1,000-yard years with the Raiders in 2019 and 2020.

As much as he felt he needed to step away from football at the moment, Waller soon realized the type of impact the game had on the joy in his own life.

It surely is hard to fathom any person going through the string of difficult personal obstacles he faced in a short period while trying to maintain success in one's professional career,

Nevertheless, Waller's brief window into retirement was exactly the new lease on life that he needed, and it has provided him with the fresh perspective he needed to return to the NFL and try to close out his story with the league that has given him so many second chances on a positive note.

Waller said he is willing to be fully committed, no matter what the final chapter of his athletic career holds with the Dolphins, and he is going to pursue his new opportunity with enthusiasm and effort that perhaps wasn't fully demonstrated in his last tenure in East Rutherford.

"I feel like a lot of that time away allowed me to reevaluate and understand that it's a full-time commitment through February," Waller said. "And when you're coming in with a perspective of looking at all the little things that can bring you joy, I feel life is a lot different than the way I approached the game in 2023."

"And that's probably going to be as valuable an experience as I ever had playing football as I come in now and realizing these chances aren't just something you can go pick off a tree or anybody gets them any given day, just walking off the street, so it's something I want to take advantage of and do it with a smile on my face."

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This article first appeared on New York Giants on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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