Darren Waller had kept much of his relationship with his-now wife, WNBA champion Kelsey Plum, close to the vest, including not revealing the details surrounding his October proposal to his former Las Vegas Raiders team.
Months before the Raiders traded the Pro Bowl tight end to the Giants at the start of NFL free agency in March, an apparent disconnect between parties began to emerge, according to a lengthy report published Wednesday by ESPN.
Five weeks into the regular season, Waller — who has missed 14 games due to injury over the last two years — suffered a hamstring injury during an Oct. 11 loss to the Chiefs.
With the Raiders entering their bye week in Week 6, the team yearned for their 30-year-old tight end “to jump-start his rehab and be ready for the next game given the extended time off,” ESPN reported Wednesday.
That sentiment was reiterated on a March podcast by Mike Lombardi, a former NFL exec whose son, Mick Lombardi, is the team’s offensive coordinator.
“Redid your contract and on the bye week, instead of rehabbing, you went home for four days and accrued the fines. On the bye week, you went home and just didn’t talk to anybody. Just went home and left a message saying ‘Hey, fine me. I don’t care. I’m going to Southern California,'” the elder Lombardi said on “The GM Shuffle” podcast.
When asked about Lombardi’s comments on the “AP Pro Football” podcast last month, Waller explained that at the time, he was quietly planning to pop the question to Plum, whom he had started dating in early 2022.
“It was something I wanted to keep ultimately, completely private from the team,” Waller said.
“So the Thursday through Sunday, which we’re mandated to get off by the league, that was when I proposed to Kelsey. So I was going there and didn’t really want to share with anyone, and I was like, ‘yeah, I’m just going here, and that’s where I’m going to be,’ because you’re mandated to get off Thursday through Sunday, and that’s what I did.
“I eventually told [Raiders head coach] Josh [McDaniels] and that’s how he knew and was able to, by mistake, tell the reporters my wedding was happening.”
Waller said his mission was to keep things “ultimately private, so that’s why I didn’t tell anybody where I was going from that Thursday to that Sunday.”
Long before McDaniels spilled the beans on Waller and Plum’s March nuptials, however, the Raiders were apparently “noncommittal” to the tight end “about keeping him after deciding not to trade him” at the Nov. 1 deadline, sources told ESPN.
An insider close to Waller alleged the relationship between the tight end and the Raiders’ brain trust of McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler turned “rocky” after the negotiations of his three-year, $51 million contract extension in September.
Though Waller was sidelined for several weeks with the hamstring injury, he returned to action in December and played in the Raiders’ final four games of the regular season.
Weeks after the 2022 regular season concluded, discussions about New York acquiring Waller were happening at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.
Around that time, Waller and Plum, a 28-year-old guard on the Las Vegas Aces, were swapping vows.
Upon returning from their honeymoon in Turks and Caicos, Waller was informed he was going to be a member of the Giants.
“It was a bit of a curveball, coming back one day from the honeymoon,” Waller said.
Despite the sudden turn of events, Waller has the support of Plum as they both embark on a new chapter, now as husband and wife.
“I’m grateful to have somebody that understands how things work in an industry like this, and we just go forward and make the best of it,” Waller said.
Plum previously expressed her excitement about New York in a March Instagram Story, writing in part, “We’re so excited, NY let’s get it.”