Miami Gardens, Florida – Those who watch Monday’s match may have been surprised by the performance of Miami Dolphins, Darren Waller, but this feeling never exceeded the entry doors of the team’s facilities.
Waller caught two passed passes despite a game of 16 snaps in the Miami 27-21 victory against New York Jets. The game has marked his first since January 2024. But when he was asked if he imagined this kind of debut of Waller, the Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, had left a single word.
“Yeah.”
Waller spent the 2023 season with the New York Giants but retired the following June and did not play all 2024 season. He was exchanged to the Dolphins during the offseason, but missed most of the training camp and the first three games of the regular season with a hip injury.
McDaniel said that Waller’s game on Monday evening was not a surprise for anyone, not only because of what they had seen him do during the premium of his career with the raiders, but because of what they had seen him do in training.
In 2019 and 2020, the only tight end of the NFL to record more captures than the 197 of Waller and more yards than his 2,341 was the star of the Chiefs of Kansas City, Travis Kelce. These seasons also marked the only one in which he played a full season.
“You have no players with the expectation of anything other than their best,” said McDaniel. “I knew he was fully capable. I just didn’t want to cook him. It inspires me and I think that inspires his teammates … All he has done is all he can do and put his best foot forward, and he was a phenomenal contributor to our team.
“I think the guys felt him. He did everything he could to participate, and they were very confident when he was ready to leave that he is what we know he was.”
The wide receiver of the Dolphins, Tyreek Hill, will miss the rest of the 2025 season after dislocating his left knee in the match on Monday, leaving a total hole in the pass match of their offense.
The 6 -foot 6 -inch and 240 pound Waller will not play most of the shots when Miami plays the Carolina Panthers on Sunday (1 p.m., and, Fox), but its size adds a new dynamic to an offense that has presented smaller passes sensors in recent seasons.
During the Waller’s first Touché Touch on Monday, the quarter-Arrière Tua Tagovailoa launched the ball intentionally high with a defender on the hip of Waller and another ends. Waller spread, caught the ball and hit both feet within the limits.
It made an impression on Tagovailoa.
“The first launch of the touch was a revelation for me that has just given the length he has,” said Tagovailoa. “In a way, it was a jet of trust where I felt like,” Dang, it was high that I launched this ball “, and for him to get up and make a game like that, gives me more preview of the type of ball that I can throw if he is never going.”
McDaniel said that the plan was not to go from “zero to 60” on Sunday, in terms of Waller’s workload, but the tight end came out of the “clean” game, despite a trio of limited practices this week.
Waller also converted a third to the Dolphins opening reader in addition to his second Touché take, ending the day with three catches for 27 yards.
Waller has never reached the same level of production of his 2019 and 2020 seasons, recording 1,605 yards during the three seasons before his retirement. But the start of his Dolphins mandate confident in his ability to contribute in the field.
“From the first third of the match, being able to align and beat the blanket and win from man – it’s as if your body and your nervous system remember what it does to go out and compete,” said Waller. “It was a good way to start, I suppose, to come back a little.
“I think that naturally, it is human to have a certain uncertainty having not only been in the line of fire with the flying balls at full speed. It is good to return to the mixture and to know that I am always able to contribute and to be one of the guys in attack on which the team can rely.”
