Signing Darren Waller was a risk. Was it worth taking for the Panthers?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
The signing of free agent Darren Waller makes the Carolina Panthers a more fascinating team.
Read more $8M Excelsior Club resurrection takes another step forward with rezoning request
Will it make them a better one?
That’s the central question when you take a leap on a tight end who will be 34 on Sept. 13, the opening day of the Panthers’ 2026 regular season.
Waller has been in the NFL since 2015 and has had about three careers worth of experiences already: the Pro Bowl years, the season-long suspension for substance abuse, the injury-plagued seasons, the celebrity marriage that lasted only 13 months, the albums, the charitable foundation to help others who struggle with addictions, the retirement and the un-retirement.
My take on this move for the Panthers is it’s a worthy risk, and also a shot across the bow for the Panthers’ current tight end room. This wasn’t the sort of injury-induced signing you see hundreds of times in every NFL season. This was a team that was healthy at tight end, but looked around at what it saw from the position at training camp and decided that it needed…. Something.
Neither Greg Olsen nor Wesley Walls was about to walk through that door, but maybe Waller could situationally be the next best thing, for a little while.
Waller’s attributes are obvious. He reminds me of what would have happened if Cam Newton played tight end. He’s 6-foot-6 and 245 pounds, and the first thing everyone says upon meeting him is some variation of, “Geez, you’re way bigger than I thought.” Yet Waller was a wide receiver in college at Georgia Tech, so he’s got enough burst to create separation. And he’s dangerous at the goal line: Waller only caught 24 passes for the Miami Dolphins last year, but six went for touchdowns.
Then again, he’s now the Panthers’ oldest position player. Waller had three different injuries last season that cost him eight of a potential 17 games. There’s always a danger that a 30-something tight end is going to break down.
Waller, however, doesn’t have as many miles under the hood as you might imagine. He has missed two NFL seasons entirely — the first in 2017, when he was suspended for at least one year without pay for violating the league’s policy on substance abuse. The second one was in 2024, when he retired for a full season.
On “The Pivot” podcast in March 2022, Waller went in depth about a harrowing tale of addiction that began when he started taking opiates at age 15. He progressed to other drugs, including cocaine, and had an addiction to alcohol, too. He failed multiple NFL-mandated drug tests (on the show, he said he had failed more than 100 drug tests in his life).
During 2017, when he was banned from playing in the league, Waller has said in several interviews that he nearly died from a fentanyl overdose. That incident prompted a rehab stint, and Waller would eventually work as a grocery-store clerk for seven months while he served his NFL suspension.
Read more Whatley’s transgender attack, YMCA sale: What got Charlotte talking Aug. 10-16
Then Waller made an extraordinary comeback. With the Raiders, he blossomed from the practice squad player to a star who had two 1,100-yard receiving seasons in a row in 2019 and 2020. He was a fantasy football darling. Then-coach Jon Gruden said of Waller in 2021: “He’s the best player I’ve ever coached.”
But that was the season injuries began to catch up with Waller. He missed an average of roughly six games per year for the next three seasons. After the 2023 season, which he played with the New York Giants, he retired.
Also shoehorned in there was a short-lived marriage to WNBA star Kelsey Plum — they were married for 13 months before getting divorced in 2024.
And all through his career, Waller has loved music. A great-grandson of “Fats” Domino, the legendary jazz musician, Waller’s own music is mostly hip-songs that he writes, raps and produces. He has released multiple albums.
For the Panthers, though, he’s all about football. Waller said in his introductory press conference Monday he had been training for six months, awaiting his next opportunity. “Anybody that offered me a job, I was gonna play,” he said.
Head coach Dave Canales pronounced Waller in “phenomenal shape,” although he noted that Waller had been “leaking (sweat) out here” due to a 117 heat index at Monday’s practice.
The Panthers will be careful with the veteran, probably holding him out of both the joint practice with Jacksonville Wednesday and the exhibition game Friday. They just want Waller to get ready for Week 1 and to learn the playbook, which he said looked like it was written in “Mandarin Chinese” on Monday.
“But soon it’ll be something that I understand a lot more,” he said.
Let’s hope so. Waller will enrich the locker room just by being inside it, due to his life experiences. For a team that hasn’t had consistent production from the tight end spot since parting ways with Olsen before the 2020 season, however, there will be ample opportunity to enrich it on the field as well.
Read more Review: Mötley Crüe brought 1989 back to Charlotte. Not everything has aged well
