Don't Overlook Zach Ertz in Tight End Talk
Travis Kelce and George Kittle are often called the best tight ends in the game. That they will both play in Super Bowl LIV on Sunday makes it hard to argue. Their numbers back it up, too.
Kelce has had four straight 1,000-plus-yard receiving seasons with 37 touchdowns in career.
Kittle has had back-to-back 1,000-plus-yard receiving seasons with five touchdowns in each of those years.
One of them will win the Super Bowl and become just the sixth tight end to have recorded a 1,000-yard season and win the Big Game.
There is one tight end who always seems to get left out of the conversation about the greatest tight end in the game today, and that is the Eagles’ Zach Ertz.
Ertz is working on a Hall of Fame career and, as he pointed out following the season, he hopes he can continue constructing that sort of resume with the Eagles.
The day after the Eagles’ season ended, Ertz talked about wanting to be here, but knowing this is a business and nobody in the locker room is guaranteed to be back – except for quarterback Carson Wentz – following a downward trajectory that went from a Super Bowl in 2017 to one playoff win in 2018 to a playoff loss in 2019. Ertz sounded as if he may not be back.
Howie Roseman didn’t sound like a general manager who would be parting ways with Ertz when Roseman met with reporters three days after the season ended.
“I think that from our perspective, one, I think just talking to Zach over the last couple days, Zach's got two years left on his contract,” said Roseman on Jan. 8. “He's a guy that's had a tremendous career. He's got a chance to not only go in the Eagles Hall of Fame, but really, the NFL Hall of Fame.
“I think our goal is to keep our home-grown players here. I don't think - I don't want to put words in his mouth, but just having conversations - I don't think it was meant to be reflected about concern about his immediate future.”
Ertz just missed having his second consecutive 1,000-yard season, ending the year with 916 yards on 88 catches. He missed the regular-season finale, or maybe he would have hit 1,000. In 2018, he set an NFL-record for most catches by a tight end in a single season with 116 to go along with 1,163 yards.
In seven seasons with the Eagles, after being drafted out of Stanford in the second round, Ertz has made 525 catches for 5,743 yards and 35 touchdowns in the regular season.
Kelce, who was a third-round pick out of Cincinnati in the same draft as Ertz, has 507 catches for 6,465 yards and 37 touchdowns, but in 10 fewer games than Ertz.
Kittle hasn’t been in the league for as long, getting picked in the fifth round of the 2017 draft out of Iowa. Following a rookie season that saw him catch 43 passes for 515 yards and two touchdowns Kittle has gone off for 88-1,377 and 85-1,053 with five scores in each of those seasons.
Fact is all three tight ends are the best in the game today.
Let’s see what Kelce and Kittle do in their first Super Bowl.
We already saw what Ertz did two years ago.
In a rollickingly entertaining Super Bowl, with big play after big play, Ertz did not get left out of his share. Nor did New England’s Rob Gronkowski, for that matter.
Ertz had seven catches on none targets for 67 yards and one touchdown. Gronkowski had nine reception on 15 targets for 116 yards and two touchdowns.
Gronkowski’s 4-yard touchdown pass with 9:22 to play in the fourth quarter gave the Patriots their first lead of the game at 33-32. It was a clutch play.
Ertz made two clutch plays and there isn’t any way to distinguish which one was better or more important because they both came on the same drive, the drive that came immediately after New England had taken its first lead.
First, there was Ertz’s fourth-one-catch that went for two yards and a first down. It wasn’t an easy catch by any means, contested by both Duron Harmon and Trey Flowers. New England knew it was coming, but they couldn’t stop it.
Second, Ertz completed the drive that gave the Eagles the lead back and for good this time with an 11-yard reception that required him to dive across the goal line while being tackled with 2:21 to go in the game.
Brandon Graham gets all the love for his strip sack after that go-ahead score by Ertz, and the Philly Special gets its deserved share of attention, but it was Ertz who made some game-defining plays of his own.
Except they are mostly underrated plays. Just like the tight end himself, even though he shouldn’t be.
