Commanders’ Zach Ertz scores TD in ‘emotional’ Philly homecoming: ‘I really wanted this one’

The Super Bowl LII hero caught six balls for 47 yards and a touchdown in his first game as a visitor at the Linc.

Washington Commanders tight end Zach Ertz played his first game in Philly as a visitor on Thursday.Read moreMonica Herndon / Staff Photographer

Published Nov. 15, 2024, 1:42 a.m. ET

Zach Ertz walked into the visitor’s locker room at Lincoln Financial Field and asked for a Sharpie.

Almost everything about the night felt like old times. The faces, the field, the fans, the former teammates, and the family that came to watch the veteran tight end’s return to the place he called home for the first nine years of his career.

Unfamiliar, though, were the four walls in which he wrote a parting message to Lane Johnson on the back of his new jersey after the Eagles beat Ertz’s Washington Commanders, 26-18, on Thursday night to spoil the 34-year-old’s first time playing in Philadelphia against the team that drafted him back in 2013.

“Pregame, obviously, was emotional,” Ertz said after the game. “The coin toss, everything after that was emotional. Seeing my family in the stands, they’re in the suite where they always were, was emotional. But at the end of the day, once the ball was snapped, it felt like a normal football game. I really wanted this one, just like I want all of them, but this one, I wanted it a lot.”

Ertz said the emotions first sank in when he started seeing members of the Eagles organization on the field before the game, including the team’s janitor.

“Just seeing people I haven’t seen in a long time,” Ertz said. “People that were an integral part of my career here that I haven’t seen in a long time, people that were in football ops, people that work the building at the practice facility, saw the janitor, one of the first people I saw when I came out here. Just seeing people I didn’t see for a long time was special.”

Ertz received an ovation from fans as his pregame walk to midfield for the coin toss was displayed on the Jumbotron. He embraced former teammates Brandon Graham, Darius Slay, Jake Elliott, and Vinny Curry, who was an honorary captain after announcing his official retirement earlier this week.

Ertz finished the game with six catches for 47 yards and one touchdown late in the fourth quarter. He also caught the two-point conversion attempt deep in the end zone to put the Commanders within one score with 28 seconds remaining in the game.

He’ll get another shot at his former team later this season, when the Eagles travel to Northwest Stadium, formerly FedEx Field, in Week 16 for a matchup that could very well have playoff implications.

When asked what stands out about the Eagles going into the final third of the season trailing them by 1½ games in the NFC East, Ertz pointed to the team’s surging defense as a major challenge.

“They’re extremely well-coached on the defense,” Ertz said. “Better than — the whole crew is playing at a high level together. I got a lot of respect for Vic Fangio, he was my DC in college [at Stanford] for a year, so I’m not surprised in how they’re playing. Jalen Carter is going to be one of the best defensive players in this league for a long time. He’s the key cog on that defense, in my opinion.”