CHANDLER, Ariz. — Zach Ertz had the same thought as many who watched him suffer a gruesome knee injury in December.

Is this it?

The veteran Eagles tight end knew at the very least that his season was over as he lay on the turf at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota — once the setting of his greatest triumph in football with the Eagles.

“It hurts my soul,” Ertz said, nearly four months later, recalling the moment. “I wasn’t in pain. It was more like shock. I didn’t feel pain when I got hit. I didn’t feel pain when I was laying down. I just knew something was wrong.”

And he knew, at age 35 and just three years removed from a season-ending injury to his other knee, that his career might be over. Ertz’s thoughts as he was carted off the field in Minnesota — sobbing with his head under a towel — could be summed up in the words spoken by narrator Liev Schreiber in the Hard Knocks episode that aired a few days later:

It’s every player’s worst fear: an injury that might end a career. A steep price to pay for the game you love.

The MRI the next day didn’t offer much solace. The ACL and lateral collateral ligament in Ertz’s right knee were torn, as was his hamstring. It was believed that he also sustained cartilage and meniscus damage. His doctors wouldn’t know the full extent of the injury, though, until surgery.

For Ertz and his family, it was a week fraught with emotion and uncertainty. His three young sons didn’t fully understand the gravity of the situation, but the eldest, 3-year-old Madden, knew his dad was hurt.

“He’s like, ‘Dad, so when’s the next game? When are you gonna play next?’” Ertz said. “I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m not gonna play for a while.’ And it’s just like tears running down my face.”

Ertz didn’t want to go out this way, especially considering how well he had performed for the Commanders the past two seasons. He just needed a flicker of hope. It came the following Monday after his knee was reconstructed: The cartilage and meniscus weren’t damaged after all.

If he was willing to put in the effort — and few who knew his legendary work ethic doubted he would — Ertz could return to full strength in about nine months. A 14th NFL season isn’t guaranteed. He is a free agent and may not be 100% by September.

But Ertz, who invited The Inquirer along for a recent therapy and training session, said he’s already ahead of the pace of his first ACL rehabilitation before the 2023 season. And that injury occurred two weeks earlier in the season. He is driven by many factors, but he doesn’t want the grisly bending of his knee to be a lasting image.

“I don’t want it to be the last play that I have,” Ertz said on March 31. “Even talking to people now, and they do it out of the goodness of their heart, and [they say], ‘Man, that injury was tough.’ When people think of my career and that last play, I don’t want that to be the conversation starter.

“And so, for me, it’s just doing everything I can to get back to my best because I felt like I was playing really good football before I got hurt.”

The Commanders haven’t ruled out bringing him back. Two weeks ago, Ertz met with Washington coach Dan Quinn at the nearby Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix during the NFL meetings. A day later, he returned to see Eagles general manager Howie Roseman.

The Eagles aren’t in the market for a starting-caliber tight end. They re-signed Dallas Goedert last month and are likely to further address the position in the draft later this month. But stranger things have happened. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie acknowledged as much.

“Maybe he’ll go back to Washington. We don’t know. You never know,” Lurie said to The Inquirer during the league meetings. “We brought back Brandon Graham. So you never know.”

Ertz said he would love to end his career where it started and have a chance at the Eagles receptions record that he’s 11 shy from breaking. He said he wants to retire in midnight green either way. Lurie said he would welcome the symbolic gesture, as he has for other franchise greats who left the team.

Time heals. Ertz said he no longer has a chip on his shoulder about the contract dispute that eventually led to the Eagles trading him to the Cardinals in October 2021. He matured into a man in Philadelphia, but he said fatherhood has changed the way he views his past, and how he relates to others now.

Ertz said he isn’t as singularly focused on himself. It was that compulsion, however, that helped make him a Philly fan favorite, even if some believed his demands led to his exit.

“I think there’s a little misconception that I wanted to leave,” Ertz said. “I never wanted to leave. I know some fans think, ‘Oh, Zach wanted to leave.’ I said 1,000 times to Howie I did not want to leave.

“It’s just the nature of the business. They drafted a kid [Goedert] in the second round that was a good player, who they thought was better long term than I was gonna be.”

Nearly five years later, Ertz doesn’t appear much different on the surface. He’s got some gray hairs sprinkled along the edges of his beard. And there were visible scars from two knee operations as he sat upright on a treatment table at AMDG Sports Performance Training Center just south of Phoenix.

As “K2,” his physical therapist, massaged his right knee, Ertz talked about the other knee rehab. An infection and the need to replace an anchor forced doctors to go back in three offseasons ago, which complicated his recovery.

He didn’t want to hear about a delay back then. He set Week 1 as his goal with a new Cardinals coaching staff — led by former Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon — set to take over.

“In hindsight, I probably should have waited a few more weeks,” Ertz said. “Whereas this one I’m just focused on the day to day. And whenever I’m back to myself, I’ll be honest and have people around me that can be honest with me.”

Ertz still has an ideal timeline. He wants to be in training camp long enough to be ready by Week 1. But he conceded that he might have to spend a few weeks on a prospective team’s physically unable to perform list before playing.

He said he’s not putting additional pressure on himself to return early, although he said having gone through the process before has prepared him for molasses-like improvement. K2, who also handled Ertz’s therapy the first time around, eventually flipped his patient onto his stomach and worked the range of motion in his knee.

“Took a while to get there,” K2 said, “but we got it.”

Said Ertz about the rehab: “The first time you go through it it’s like, ‘Man, is this ever gonna get better?’ This one is, ‘I know it’s gonna get better.’ It’s just a matter of how long does it take to get better?”

Not being under contract has given him a freedom of sorts. He doesn’t have to be at a team facility when spring workouts start this month. He can stay home in Arizona with his family and close to his medical team.

But Ertz will likely have to carve out a role wherever he signs and earn whatever comes his way.

“I’m going in with eyes wide open,” he said. “I’m not going in with a lot of expectation. If I was a team I probably wouldn’t expect me, based on the injury, based on my age — ‘Hey, this is our Week 1 starter.’ But I do think if I can get back to myself that I’m still that same guy.”

Ertz was on pace to have roughly the same receiving numbers in 2025 that he’d posted the year before, even though the Commanders were often without starting quarterback Jayden Daniels. Ertz had 50 catches for 504 yards in 13 games and caught 10 passes for 106 yards against the Broncos in his last full game.

Washington had lost seven straight and was out of the playoff hunt ahead of a Week 14 matchup at the Vikings, but Daniels was returning from injury. Ertz had played in Minnesota twice since winning Super Bowl LII in February 2018. Coincidentally, former Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz was playing for the Vikings this time around.

The former teammates remain close and went to dinner the night before, Ertz said, but the injured Wentz wasn’t in attendance at the game. Early in the third quarter, Ertz caught an 11-yard pass on fourth-and-1 — not far from where he converted from the same down and distance ahead of his game-winning touchdown in the Super Bowl.

Two drives later, he went up for a pass and was undercut by safety Jay Ward. Ertz’s knee hyperextended to a point where the broadcasters warned viewers before showing the replay. He knew the injury was bad, but he didn’t know how bad it looked until he saw the video.

“When I first got hurt, I was like, ‘Man, is this it?’” Ertz said. “It was such a violent injury, the abruptness of the season being over. … The video is nasty. I’ve seen it plenty of times. Once is enough and I’ve seen it more than once.”

His wife, Julie, watched the game with Madden and 1-year-old twins Kace and Kyren from the Ertzes’ in-season home in the D.C. area. She was waiting for Zach when the Commanders’ charter landed at Dulles International Airport later that night.

“All the tight ends were there helping me off the plane, and the coaches were helping me, and Julie’s there to pick me up,” Ertz said. “It’s just like tears the moment I see her just crying, like uncontrollably. It was just tough.”

Julie Ertz probably understands her husband’s plight better than most wives. The two-time U.S. Soccer Female Player of the Year faced difficult decisions late in her career. In 2021, she played in the Olympics despite suffering a torn medial collateral ligament in her knee just two months earlier.

Two years later, she played in every minute of the USWNT’s four matches in the World Cup after taking an 18-month hiatus for injuries and motherhood. Julie announced her retirement in August 2023. The twins were born almost a year later.

Zach said he’s engaged as a father but he isn’t ready to hang up his cleats.

“Julie’s like, ‘Whatever you want to do, you should go for it,’ like she’s been that way our entire career,” Ertz said. “It’s such a benefit to able to be married to someone that has experienced many of the same emotions that come with the sport and understanding [what] my days are like right now.”

Ertz said he wakes up most mornings around 6:30, puts his compression boots on, and makes his sons breakfast. On this day, he made “protein pancakes” with cottage cheese, eggs and rolled oats.

“They crushed them. All three of them just eat,” Ertz said. “The amount of food we’re gonna have to buy when they’re legit older is gonna be insane.”

Ertz said he then drives Madden to school from his Scottsdale home on the way to AMDG. Zach’s next four hours are spent undergoing therapy and then training in the large weight room normally reserved for local NFL offensive linemen during the offseason.

After two hours with K2, Ertz strapped on a pair of old Nikes — “my squatting shoes,” he called them — and headed to the gym. He works out alone. He said he’s had essentially the same routine since his college years at Stanford, when he first worked with famed strength coach Shannon Turley.

“He just instilled all this stuff, like the nutrition, the recovery, when I was 18,” Ertz said. “He said I was so stiff as a freshman in college that if I was a horse, he would have put me down.”

Ertz said he still talks to Turley nearly every day. He believes he still has the same spring in his step compared to when he set the Eagles’ single-season mark for catches and was voted to three straight Pro Bowls from 2017-19.

But he knows Father Time is calling. The Hard Knocks episode that featured Ertz included a light moment when Commanders tight ends coach David Raih interspersed highlights of the 35-year old with a clip of an elderly man slowly running with the football.

Raih could joke because Ertz knew how much the coach respected his player.

“I’ve coached a ton of guys. Been in all four divisions in the NFC. And the best two guys I worked with are [Hall of Fame receiver] Larry Fitzgerald and Zach Ertz,” Raih said on Hard Knocks. “He’s one of those players you tell the young players, ‘You may go your whole career and never be around a guy like Zach.’

“The detail, the work ethic, the precision. He truly believes in his process.”

Ertz is still as committed. He said he doesn’t bring work home as much as he used to, though. After working out, he’ll recover in a hyperbaric chamber for about an hour and a half, and then sweat and soak it out in the sauna and cold tub.

But when he returns to Julie and the boys — and that goes for in-season, as well — he’s just a husband and father.

“No one’s gonna remember how many catches I had or how I played in the game,” Ertz said. “People are gonna remember the impact I made or how I made them feel. And so, I think feel like that stage of my career has really grown since I left Philly and had kids.

“Being able to come home and not be in your own thoughts, because kids don’t care about football. They don’t care about how I did in practice. They want me to come home and be Dad.”

The shifting of priorities away from football has made Ertz reconsider how he handled himself earlier in his career. He said he viewed everyone in the tight end room as competition, especially when the Eagles drafted Goedert in 2018. Ertz was only 28 then and in his prime.

But he said he embraced mentorship in Washington with younger tight ends like John Bates and Ben Sinnott.

“I didn’t open up a lot back then,” Ertz said of his time with the Eagles. “I was kind of just stay in my own lane. I’m gonna work as hard as I can and the relationship piece is, like, way down the line. Whereas now, as I’ve gotten older, I really try to pour into these young tight ends more than I did.”

Ertz admitted he “probably rubbed some people a little bit the wrong way,” but he said he had no regrets about his 8½ seasons in Philly. Well, except for one thing.

“I probably wouldn’t have dyed my hair,” Ertz said.

After months of trade rumors and speculation about his future during the 2021 offseason, Ertz showed up at training camp in bleached-blond hair. He was clearly making a statement. But Ertz concedes now that it was unnecessary and uncharacteristic.

He was gone by Week 7, dealt to the Cardinals for cornerback Tay Gowen and a fifth-round draft pick.

Ertz said any bitter feelings he had about the divorce have subsided. He looks back on his tenure with only affection. When he returned to Lincoln Financial Field for the first time in November 2024, the Eagles showed him on the Jumbotron and he received a warm ovation.

He caught six passes and a touchdown, but Washington lost. A month later, the Commanders returned the favor in Landover, Md. Ertz had only one catch, a fact Eagles coach Nick Sirianni threw in his face when they shook hands afterward.

Ertz took exception and went back after his former coach, but he laughed it off 15 months later.

“That was two competitive guys that hate losing,” Ertz said. “We have a great relationship still.”

The two teams met again in the NFC championship game, but the Eagles won in a blowout. Ertz pulled in 11 passes for 104 yards, but watching his former team celebrate at the Linc — just as he had seven years earlier — was a tough pill to swallow.

When Ertz walked across the field after the final whistle, Eagles tackle Lane Johnson was waiting for him.

“He’s, like, in tears,” Ertz said. “I’m like, ‘Bro, what is wrong, you just won the game?’ He’s like, ‘You should just be over here.’”

The Eagles’ 2023 trip to the Super Bowl was more difficult to stomach than the 2024 season’s in February 2025, Ertz said, because the wounds were still fresh and many of his former teammates were still on the roster. He’s still plugged into the team and Philly, where his family’s foundation still does much of its community service, and won’t rule out a return.

“I think everyone knows how I feel about that place, that city, in particular,” Ertz said. “I loved it, loved it. And I wouldn’t close that door either by any means. I think it’s worth the conversation, for sure.”

Only four tight ends in NFL history have more than his 825 career receptions. But he said surpassing Harold Carmichael’s Eagles mark of 589 catches is “definitely not lost on me.”

“I would love him to get it,” Lurie said, “but not at the expense of what we need to do.”

Whether Ertz gets a chance to break the record or not, he will eventually be granted the franchise’s greatest honor as a member of the Eagles Hall of Fame.

“I love Zach and his legacy is phenomenal and his personhood in Philadelphia is incredible,” Lurie said. “People don’t realize. It’ll come out more when we induct him and we’ll make sure people realize [he was] much more than just the player.”

There will come a time when he’s no longer playing the game that has defined him for the last 30 years. Ertz said, if forced, he could accept not suiting up again. But he said he will do everything he can to prevent that from being the case.

“I don’t want to retire with any regret,” Ertz said. “Like if only I worked a little harder, if only I tried a little harder, if only I studied a little more. I’ve poured everything into this thing. And so, if I wasn’t able to play again, I could walk away knowing that, hey, I gave it my all.

“But I still want to play. And I think the time to reflect is when it’s officially done. But I don’t think that is right now.”