{"id":188400,"date":"2025-07-07T13:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T13:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/188400\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T13:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T13:48:10","slug":"plaxico-burress-doesnt-think-darren-waller-wanted-to-play-for-brian-daboll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/188400\/","title":{"rendered":"Plaxico Burress doesn’t think Darren Waller wanted to play for Brian Daboll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veteran tight end Darren Waller has shocked the New York Giants<\/a> twice since being acquired in a trade with the Las Vegas Raiders<\/a> — once when he decided to retire in 2024 and then again when he decided to end his retirement last week.<\/p>\n

Admittedly frustrated with his role, Waller recently revealed that his decision to call it quits came in Week 6 of the 2024 season, midway through a game<\/a> against the Buffalo Bills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Waller’s decision to unretire also came with a caveat: He wanted to play for the Miami Dolphins<\/a> and requested a trade.<\/p>\n

The Giants and general manager Joe Schoen obliged, shipping Waller to South Beach<\/a> along with a 2027 seventh-round pick in exchange for a 2026 conditional sixth-round pick.<\/p>\n

So, what led to each of Waller’s abrupt decisions? Former Giants wide receiver and Super Bowl champion Plaxico Burress believes he knows.<\/p>\n

“He came to the Giants and they had him back there playing fullback,” Burress said during the Up On Game podcast<\/a>. “You’re a tight end. You’re not built psychologically or mentally as a tight end to be running up in the two and four hole, taking on middle linebackers and linemen. That\u2019s not how we are built as players.”<\/p>\n

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Waller did gripe about playing fullback, so that’s a logical conclusion. However, Burress thinks it was more than that.<\/p>\n

“I think it had more to do with a lot of things that he had going on outside of football, and I don’t really think he wanted to be here in New York playing for Brian Daboll. I really, honestly believe that,” he said. “It wasn’t a good situation. Daniel Jones is at quarterback; they weren’t using him as a tight end, which is what they brought him here for.”<\/p>\n

At the time of Waller’s retirement, Schoen said he had no regrets over the trade, which cost the Giants a compensatory third-round pick in the 2025 NFL draft. You have to wonder if he still feels that way now.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Giants Wire: Ex-Giant doesn’t think Darren Waller wanted to play for Brian Daboll<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran tight end Darren Waller has shocked the New York Giants twice since being acquired in a trade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2067],"tags":[200,53,2772,4540,7,519,201,393,251,1917,56,2321,2469,6,11716],"class_list":{"0":"post-188400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-giants","8":"tag-brian-daboll","9":"tag-buffalo-bills","10":"tag-daniel-jones","11":"tag-darren-waller","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-giants","14":"tag-joe-schoen","15":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","16":"tag-miami-dolphins","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-giants","19":"tag-newyork","20":"tag-newyorkgiants","21":"tag-nfl","22":"tag-plaxico-burress"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114812269739516601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}