MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Jon Gruden had just sat in his Tampa backyard with Darren Waller in June, reflecting on life’s possibilities with perhaps his favorite player. And so when those possibilities turned into Waller’s second touchdown Monday night, “I was so excited I almost shot through the roof,’’ Gruden said.
“Darren Freakin’ Waller,’’ he wrote that night on Twitter.
Marc Trestman felt that way a few minutes earlier Monday. After the Miami Dolphins tight end’s first touchdown — a leaping catch at the back of the end zone — his former Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator grabbed his phone.
“Darren, really happy to see you back in the game!’’ Trestman texted him. “Excited for you.”
Sometimes you get a moment so clean and right, one where the good guy overcomes so much that anyone accompanying his rare journey celebrates — sometimes in moments like Waller’s first NFL game in 631 days Monday night you’re reminded how sports feel at their best.
“Great, wasn’t it?” said Paul Johnson, Waller’s former Georgia Tech coach. “I had company over, and only caught bits and pieces of the game, but … it was great to see him have that kind of game.”
No one knows where it goes from here, whether that’s as good as it gets or Monday night’s debut is the start of some comeback tour for Waller that continues Sunday when the Dolphins play in Carolina. But Waller was as surprised as everyone about it how it started.
“I didn’t know what to expect,’’ he said.
It wasn’t just that he retired for the 2024 season after injuries and anxiety made him fall out of love with football. It wasn’t just that he didn’t feel the gravitational pull to return to football until last summer.
“I began meditating on it,’’ he said. “I was kind of feeling it pull me back and I was like, ‘I don’t know I thought I was done for real.’ But I guess I kind of let God steer the wheel.”
Even talking at Gruden’s home in June, Waller remembers telling his former coach, “I’m in space right now where I’m enjoying where I’m at.”
He smiles. “It’s crazy how it changed a few weeks later.”
The Dolphins traded Jonnu Smith to Pittsburgh and needed a tight end.
“I thought when he signed there, with Frank Smith there, it could work,’’ Gruden said.
Smith, the Dolphins offensive coordinator, was Gruden’s tight ends coach when the Raiders signed Waller in 2018. That was after Waller’s long struggle with drugs. Percocet. Oxycodone. Cocaine. Johnson disciplined him and tried to get him help in college. He was suspended twice in Baltimore, then for a year by the league in 2017.
Gruden saw him working out as a member of the Baltimore practice squad before a November game. He signed Waller the next day.
“Best football decision I ever made,’’ Gruden said.
Smith and Waller took to each other immediately. Smith saw the hungry talent. Waller saw football in ways he never had, ways that led to his catching league highs for tight ends in 2020 of 107 passes for 1,196 yards.
“I feel Frank poured so much into preparing me and teaching me the little details of the game to help me succeed,’’ Waller said. “The last few years I played, the injuries adding up, being on some teams that make you realize coaches like Frank are once in a lifetime and you’ve got to appreciate them.
“I was like if I had an opportunity to play with (the Dolphins), I wanted to be here.”
The Dolphins signed him, but it wasn’t happy trails from there. Waller participated in only a few, limited practices through training camp. He then tore a muscle around his hip, missed the first few games and only began practicing the week before Monday’s game against the New York Jets.
“I had no idea what to expect, and I felt euphoric, the way it happened,’’ he said. “I was like buzzing, a natural thing. Through using drugs and drinking, you search for that feeling, and I was able to get that feeling just by being out there, in the present, and being with the team.”
Smith saw that catch in the back of the end zone and flashed back to a similar catch Waller made for the Raiders.
“Just seeing him do that, I was just excited for him because that’s who he is, that’s how he plays and he’s just a fun player to watch,’’ Smith said. “The energy he brings to his teammates — I mean, did you see after he scored, everyone ran to him? Because that’s who he is.”
Waller is 33, as old as anyone on the Dolphins, but he said his body felt fine this week. He only was in on 16 plays, he noted. The question becomes how much to use him Sunday, especially as a target to help replace the injured Tyreek Hill.
But as he stood at his locker on Thursday, there was a smile over his first game back. “It’s still kind of emotional,’’ he said.
After the game, Waller looked for someplace to have a celebratory dinner with a couple of longtime friends.
“The only thing we found open was a Waffle House,’’ he said.
They ate there before sitting out on Waller’s balcony and, “just reflecting on the journey,’’ he said. “They’ve seen me through a lot of ups and downs of my career and my life. We were just talking about how crazy it was to be here and have a night like that.”
Sixteen plays. Four catches. Two touchdowns. And one in a line of former coaches rooting for him, Gruden, sitting home in Tampa and saying, “I can’t wait to see what’s ahead for him.”
