NFL tight end Darren Waller has announced his retirement, informing the New York Giants of his plans, CBS Sports has confirmed. The 31-year-old Waller played one season with the Ravens, Raiders and Giants and did not participate in team activities this offseason.
“We have a lot of respect for Darren as a person and as a player and wish him the best,” the Giants said in a statement.
Waller explained the reasons for his retirement in a video posted to YouTube, recalling how in November he came down with a fever, was shivering nonstop and had trouble breathing, and was hospitalized for three and a half days.
“I just nearly lost my life. I don't know if I would have felt like my life was going well if I had died,” Waller said in the video. “This has forced me to reevaluate myself, and I have decided to retire from the NFL.”
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Waller was selected by the Baltimore Ravens in the sixth round of the 2015 NFL Draft, but struggled with drug addiction early on and was suspended for the entire 2017 NFL season for violating the league's substance abuse policy.
“I didn't feel very good about myself,” Waller told NFL Films about that time. “I knew I needed to change, but at the time it seemed too hard to change and I wasn't willing to put in the effort.”
After rehab and a job stocking a grocery store, Waller returned to the NFL. The highlight of his career was a five-year stint with the Raiders in both Oakland and Las Vegas. The tight end recorded back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons in 2019 and 2020 and was selected to the Pro Bowl in 2020.
Waller also made headlines for his tumultuous romance with fellow Las Vegas sports star Kelsey Plum, who married in 2023 before filing for divorce in April.
“I am devastated,” Plumb, who plays for the Las Vegas Aces, posted on social media the day the lawsuit was filed. “I have walked through fire for this man and now I know it is time to walk away.”
Waller, the great-grandson of jazz composer Thomas “Fats” Waller, has expressed himself in a different way: He released a music video in late May called “Who Knew (Her Perspective),” in which a woman who resembles Plum stabs Waller in the back and leaves him to die on a beach.
“I've always been a person who has had multiple passions and multiple ways of expressing myself, and it's very common for me to have certain passions wane,” Waller said in her retirement video. “The worst thing for an accomplished person like me is to think that I have to pick one path, one track in life, and stick to it like most of the world does.”
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Rishikesh Rajagopalan
