What the Eagles won’t say out loud about tight end Zach Ertz

Zach Ertz is the prototypical receiving tight end. At 6-5, 249 with decent 4.65 speed in the 40-yard, he was drafted by the Eagles in the second round of the 2013 NFL draft. He played college football at Stanford, where he was recognized as a unanimous All-American. He’s bright. He gets along well with others. He gets open on his routes and has sure hands. He’s relatively durable.

His career numbers are good and trending upward:

So what’s not to like about Zach Ertz?

Welp, here’s the insider rap on Ertz— he is not a very good blocker on interior line assignments; he does not tend to shine in the red zone; and he tends to occasionally avoid contact when perhaps he should be lowering a shoulder and helping out a brother.

Many Eagles fans turned against Zach Ertz after a disappointing 32-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals last December 4th.

Ertz and the Eagles collectively played their worst game of the season. The Eagles’ third consecutive loss at that point came to the stinking Bengals who entered that Sunday with only three wins for the season and only one since September. But the Eagles proved to be the inferior team, falling to 5-7 and watching a once-promising season deteriorate with seven losses in nine weeks.

Carson Wentz, the source of any optimism about the Eagles, had perhaps his worst game of the season. The rookie threw three interceptions for the first time, and that number could have been even higher. He finished 36 for 60 for 308 yards and one touchdown.

Tight end Zach Ertz did have nine catches for 79 yards and the score, and Paul Turner finished with six catches for 80 yards. The Eagles rushed only 19 times for 53 yards, with Wendell Smallwood’s 19 yards leading the team.

Ertz’ numbers in the Bengals game look good on paper. But something happened which caused a lot of folks to question Zach’s will to win or his heart to compete.

Ertz was in one of the two plays that looked most terrible—two plays that evolved into symbols for the Eagles’ lack of effort that Sunday in Cincinnati. Two plays that drove Eagles fans crazy:

There was Zach Ertz seemingly playing toreador on Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict in the first quarter, and there was Rodney McLeod seemingly standing by and watching Jeremy Hill score from two yards out.

Ertz’s play appeared to be the worst offender. It looked like he simply elected to step out of the way instead of at least slowing down the 250-pound Burfict as he chased Carson Wentz, who was heading out of bounds on a keeper.

A lot of guys avoid hits late in games in which their team is losing big. But in this case, it was early in the first quarter and the Eagles trailing only by a score of 3-0.

Sigh…

That’s the worst thing you can ever possibly say about a Philly player—that he’s avoiding contact to protect himself and putting himself ahead of the best interests of the team.

I’m not even saying that is or ever was Ertz’ intention on the play in question—it just looked bad, really bad.

But other than the questions about his blocking, his red-zone performance and his heart for contact, the Eagles have a very nice player in Ertz.

On that topic, I harvested a few relevant comments from some of the guys in the gallery at Dave Spadaro’s column at PE.com the other day:

EaglesNJ69 said: “I’d like to see Ertz generate more yards after catch (YAC). He averaged 2.6 YAC per catch on 78 receptions for 816 yds in 2016 on 106 targets. Travis Kelce last year averaged 7.7 YAC per catch on 85 receptions for 1,125 yards on 117 targets. At his size of 6’5″ it seems his YAC average is made up from just falling forward after the catch.”

BleedingGreen93 said: “With the new breed of TE’s I guess I should not be shocked by how tough fans are on Ertz, but he has been a really good TE so far and that is with consistent change at QB since he enter the league…..As a receiving threat he has shown he can get it done. His TD numbers need to go up, but I think that will come….As for blocking, I think Ertz is all right, he is by no means one of the best blocking TE’s but I don’t don’t think he is as terrible as so many fans make him out to be, either. I think a ton of the heat put on Ertz is because of the Bengals game last year. You can’t judge a guy solely on one play.”

Stine said: “Ertz is more like Antonio Gates (which is not a bad thing!), but name one play where he threw a block that made you do a double take. He is what he is and I have no issue with it. But I do agree he has to show us all that he can do it for 16 weeks now that he is healthy and working year 2 with the same system/QB.”

Steven Suriani said: “He just annoys the S#$@! outta me when he gets arm tackled by 185-pound DB’s…….The Dog in him is non-existing……and this year he’s out of excuses!! Time to Walk the Walk, Zach!”

Statistically he’s good—Ertz’s 5.57 catches per game rank first among NFL tight ends and his receiving yards per game rank fourth.

“I think the catches and the yards are there; the touchdowns are not,” Ertz said. “It’s something I’m definitely working on with Carson [Wentz, quarterback], the red zone, being more efficient when the ball is in the air. Getting the target numbers up in the red zone is something I need to make happen and I’m working hard each and every day to do that. I need to get it done.”

“Zach is a big part of what we do. We can move him around the formation, which he did quite a bit last year, and he can help us create matchups,” offensive coordinator Frank Reich said. “We want to get the ball to Zach. Good things happen when he has the football in his hands.”

“No question we have to be better in the red zone,” Reich said of an offense that ranked 24th in the league last year in touchdown efficiency inside opponents’ 20-yard lines. “Zach is part of that puzzle. Adding players like Alshon [Jeffery, wide receiver] and Torrey Smith [wide receiver] will help us and give Carson more options. We’ve got some size there. We’ve got more playmakers.”