GIANTS TRADE THIRD ROUND PICK FOR PRO BOWL TE DARREN WALLER
The New York Giants secured a key weapon for the newly-signed Daniel Jones on Tuesday, trading their third-round pick in this year’s draft for superstar tight end, Darren Waller.
According to multiple reports, the Las Vegas Raiders have had more than a year of talks centered on Darren Waller and nearly sent him to the Green Bay Packers in the Davante Adams trade last season.
The New York Giants sent the 100th pick they got when they traded former first-round wide receiver Kadarius Toney to the Kansas City Chiefs in November for Waller and now land one of the best tight ends in pro football.
The deal was made official on Wednesday, when the new league year officially began.
The former Baltimore Ravens draftee is an athletic pass-catching tight end who presents a mismatch with linebackers and safeties. However, he’s struggled to remain healthy in the past two seasons, missing six games in 2021 due to an ankle and a knee sprain, and missed eight games last year with a hamstring problem. Waller had been dealing with a hamstring issue since training camp.
Although the last two years have seen Waller’s production take a downward turn, the 30-year-old tight end was nothing but dynamic for the Las Vegas Raiders over the two prior seasons. Waller notched 1,145 receiving yards and 3 touchdowns in 2019 before recording 1,196 receiving yards and nine touchdowns from a league-leading 107 receptions in 2020.
The move to acquire Waller drew reaction from within the Raider faithful as restricted free agent and last year’s NFL rushing yards leader, Josh Jacobs expressed his disappointment. He tweeted: “Stuff’s [expletive] sad for real.” Jacobs was franchise-tagged by the Las Vegas Raiders before last week’s franchise tag deadline.
Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels had said just two weeks ago that Waller “will be a big part of what we’re going to do going forward” and the team will now move forward with Jesper Horsted at the tight end position, if they fail to re-sign Foster Moreau. Moreau is currently an unrestricted free agent and could still sign elsewhere if Vegas opt to add at tight end via the draft.
Waller reiterated his shock to reporters on Wednesday, telling the press “I did not see this coming…I was getting ready to just do everything I could to make myself available for the Raiders and get ready for everything that was going to start in mid-April. It caught me off guard, but it’s the nature of the business.”
Las Vegas Aces star, and wife of Waller, Kelsey Plum also voiced her displeasure with the deal, calling it a “joke”, and chiming in on an RGIII tweet on social media as well:
As for the New York Giants, the move to acquire Waller is a low-risk, high-reward type of play as the Giants rein in the 2020 Pro Bowler instead of one of the top free agent tight ends like Hayden Hurst, Mike Gesicki or Dalton Schultz.
Waller has four years left on his deal with the Raiders after signing a three-year contract extension worth $51.6 million in September. The Giants, however, are only guaranteed to pay him $11 million for the 2023 season as Waller’s contract includes an opt-out clause after this year. This means that Waller isn’t guaranteed any money after 2023 and the Giants could release him any time from 2024 to 2026 without adding dead money to the salary cap, unless they restructure the deal in a bid to free up more space in 2023.
The former Georgia Tech tight end now joins a room that includes 22-year-old Daniel Bellinger, whom the Giants drafted in the fourth round from San Diego State, 25-year-old Lawrence Cager, and Nick Vannett.
Giants head coach Brian Daboll served as a tight ends coach for four years in New England and coached likely first ballot Hall of Famer Rob Gronkowski before moving to the University of Alabama and eventually the Buffalo Bills as offensive coordinator. Known for his offensive schemes that often use packages of two tight ends, Daboll is the right coach to get Waller’s career right on track.
Meanwhile, after acquiring Jimmy Garoppolo on Monday, the Las Vegas Raiders made the first big wide receiver deal of free agency, signing New England Patriots free agent wide receiver Jakobi Myers on a three-year, $33 million deal on Tuesday.
-Maher Abucheri
Twitter: @pabloikonyero
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.