Philadelphia Eagles: The Zach Ertz situation just got a whole lot messier

The Philadelphia Eagles and Zach Ertz are barreling towards… something.

Going into the 2020 NFL season, there wasn’t a more popular player among fans of the Philadelphia Eagles than Zach Ertz.

The team’s leading receiver – and breakout star – during their Super Bowl run, Ertz came to camp on the hunt for a new contract in the same ballpark as big-name franchise players like George Kittle and Travis Kelce, even though his deal wouldn’t technically expire until the end of the 2021 season.

In theory, the idea tracked. Ertz was coming off his third straight Pro Bowl appearance and looked primed to lead the way for an Eagles offense destined to rely on a slew of young playmakers and maybe, just maybe Alshon Jeffery/DeSean Jackson.

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My goodness, things in the NFL change fast.

Through the first six weeks of the NFL season, Ertz averaged a paltry 29.6 yards-per-game. To make matters worse, Ertz had two games where he failed to even crack the 10-yard mark and hadn’t scored a touchdown since the team’s Week 1 loss to Washington.

While some assumed that Ertz’s role would expand considerably when Dallas Goedert landed on IR with a Week 3 ankle fracture, his overall production actually when down pretty noticeably – going from averaging 43 yards on five receptions a game to 16 yards on three receptions.

Needless to say, a change of scenery for a player once deemed untouchable felt more and more appropriate with each passing week, especially if the Eagles could get something of substance back moving forward.

Well, according to multiple sources, the Eagles had that opportunity and let it pass.

Initially reported by Ed Kracz from SI’s EaglesMaven, the Eagles received offers from both the Baltimore Ravens and the Green Bay Packers in the aftermath of their Week 6 loss. While the team ultimately opted to place Ertz on short-term IR a few days later, it’s incredibly telling that the Eagles opted to wait a few days ‘just in case’ before effectively ending any chances of a trade going down.

Sidebar: While the NFL does allow teams to trade a player on IR, under 2020’s very specific rules, front offices have to designate a player with a short or long-term designation. If a player has a short-term designation, they can’t be traded and must be on IR for a minimum of four games.

Now personally, I get wanting to at least see what the Ravens/Packers have to offer. Baltimore surrendered a pretty nice package for Yannick Ngakoue a few days later, and I imagine saving $6.6 million in 2020 and $8.25 million in 2021 considering the cap situation, but why even flirt with the idea if you 100 percent weren’t going to pull the trigger? Were the offers for Ertz’s services laughably bad? If not, any GM worth his salt had to have known that the conversations would leak at some point, right?

In theory, I guess that’s a good sign that the Eagles and Ertz could eventually reconcile, but is that really in the cards?

Again, the Eagles are some $70-plus million over the salary cap with less than 50 players under contract. Even if they renounce every single impending free agent and just address their roster’s holes with draft picks, the team would still need to move heaven and earth to get under the cap, let alone free up enough money to be buyers. If moving on from Ertz can take 15ish percent off that massive debit, why not do so, especially considering just how good Goedert played in Weeks 1-2?

*sigh* does Roseman have a plan at all?

Next. LeSean McCoy doesn’t deserve to go out like this. dark

If the Philadelphia Eagles want to keep Zach Ertz in 2020, why are writers like The Athletic’s Mike Lombardi reporting that he’s being actively shopped? If the Philadelphia Eagles want to move on from Zach Ertz to save money in 2021, why place him on IR a week before the trade deadline and take any negotiations off the table? Again, I don’t want to be negative, but by sending mixed messages pretty much since Ertz made his desire for a new deal known, the Eagles have effectively dashed any chances of this situation having a happy ending – instead, they’ve only kicked the can down the road towards an even bigger battle with the former fan favorite.

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