About two hours before тιԍнт end Darren Waller tried to make a game-winning walk-off touchdown catch for the Giants, he decided to retire.
Waller, who officially announced his retirement in June 2024, said he made up his mind about eight months earlier while playing against the Bills on Oct. 15, 2023.
“It was in the first quarter of the game,” Waller said on “The Side You Don’t See” podcast. “We were running like this counter-lead running play, and I’m kind of like leading through the hole like I’m a fullback. And the play is working, but I sit down on the sideline after a drive where we ran it like three times and I’m like, ‘What the f–k am I doing with my life? I’m out here playing fullback. I don’t even want to do this sh– anymore.’”
The game ended in a 14-9 loss for the Giants when Tyrod Taylor’s pᴀss to Waller from the 1-yard line fell incomplete.
The Giants wanted a penalty flag for defensive pᴀss interference, but that would’ve made two in a row since they were already playing on an untimed down after a defensive pᴀss-interference penalty moved the ball at the 1.
Waller kept his decision to himself during the game.
“I’m just like looking at the moon,” Waller said. “It’s like early first quarter, second quarter. Nobody else would even really know that I’m thinking this. But I’m on the sideline like, ‘Yup, I’m going to finish this year to the best of my ability, but I’m definitely done playing after this year.’”
Waller’s only touchdown with the Giants came the next week against Washington.
But Waller missed five games later that season with both a hamstring injury and when he was hospitalized after what he described upon retirement as a near-death experience.
He said he had trouble breathing and was “shaking uncontrollably” and “losing consciousness” in his H๏τel room.
Waller came to the Giants as a recovering drug and alcohol addict who had been suspended by the NFL for substance abuse early in his career. He always has been open about his journey to getting clean.
The former Pro Bowler returned to play the final four games of the 2023 season and publicly deflected questions about his future, but he privately informed the Giants that he was considering retirement in January, as The Post previously reported.
The Giants — who traded a third-round pick in the 2023 draft to the Raiders thinking that they would have multiple seasons of Waller’s services — believed he might change his mind and play again at least as late as March 2024.
Waller told The Post around that same time that he was still undecided.
But the Giants drafted тιԍнт end Theo Johnson in April 2024 and Waller’s retirement soon followed.
He is a podcaster and burgeoning rapper in retirement.
