Welcome to the latest installment of my weekly reimagined "Lunch with Larry," which now features wide-ranging conversations with Bears-related guests about their lives and careers.
This week my special guest is former tight end Zach Miller, who spent three seasons with the Bears from 2015-17 before a devastating leg injury ended his NFL career. I caught up with Zach late last week in London a few days before the Bears played the Jaguars. Our interview took place in an office in the basement of the New Era store where Miller signed autographs and posed for photos with Bears fans. (So I apologize for the less than aesthetic background.)
Every week I will select the best "Lunch with Larry" fan question, with the winner receiving a Connie's Pizza gift card. The question of the week can be found at the bottom of this article.
Zach Miller traveled a unique path to the NFL. A quarterback at Nebraska-Omaha, he was immediately converted to tight end after being selected by the Jaguars in the sixth round of the 2009 draft. His only experience at his new position in college came in the Cactus Bowl, a Division II all-star game.
The transition wasn't easy, but Miller was confident he could play tight end in the NFL.
"I didn't doubt myself; I just knew that I had to learn," he said. "And the only really way you could do it was to fail at it. There were times I was getting my butt whupped. But I just had to keep grinding and kind of figure out how to do it and then learn how to do it my way and use the skillset that I had."
In his first three seasons with the Jaguars, Miller appeared in 66 games with 33 starts, catching 45 passes for 470 yards and four touchdowns. But he missed the next three years due primarily to injuries.
"I was eating right, I was always in shape, I was always doing the things I felt I needed to do to be on the football field and then you just had stuff pop," Miller said. "Like you've got to have foot surgery, now you've got to have shoulder surgery, you've got to have thumb surgery. In Jacksonville, they hit back-to-back-to-back."
Looking to revitalize his career, Miller signed with the Bears in 2015.
"My first training camp I showed up to Chicago, I think I was eighth on our depth chart," Miller said. "The key was grinding. I knew that I was going to go in and kind of have just a personal chip on my shoulder. I couldn't have a public chip on my shoulder because I hadn't played. If you did that, people would be like, 'Who the hell are you? Why are you acting like that?' But deep down inside I knew that I had that ability. I just, A, needed to stay healthy, and B, I just needed to take advantage of all my opportunities."
Miller did everything he was asked and more, not only earning a roster spot but emerging as a regular contributor on offense. Appearing in 15 games with 14 starts, he caught 34 passes for 439 yards and five touchdowns.
The highlight of Miller's season came in a Week 9 Monday night game against the Chargers in San Diego when he made a sensational one-handed 25-yard touchdown catch from Jay Cutler with 3:19 to play to lift the Bears to a 22-19 win. Initially, Miller did not see the pass because he was screened by a linebacker.
"All of a sudden, the ball just shows up [and] it was like, 'Oh my God, I've got to catch this thing,'" Miller said. "Just kind of plucked it out of the air, knocked it down and was able to catch it. But that moment, that was a big one for me. Monday Night Football's crazy, and to make a play like that to win the game late was awesome. That will sit with me forever."
Miller followed in 2016 with 47 receptions for 486 yards and four TDs. But midway through the 2017 season, he sustained a career-ending injury during a game in New Orleans that nearly cost him his left leg.
The injury was diagnosed as a dislocated knee and torn popliteal artery. Bears medical personnel helped save his leg by quickly diagnosing a vascular issue that required emergency surgery.
Miller spent eight days in the ICU in a New Orleans hospital and another month at a hospital in Chicago. He underwent a total of 13 surgeries.
"In that moment, you felt like it was going to last forever," said Miller, who suffered permanent nerve damage and still experiences numbness in his leg and foot. "Days were so long and then now, being where I'm at, you look back at it, it's almost like it didn't even happen. It's like a little blip."
During his hospital stay, Miller was so bored that he began writing country music songs to pass time and mentally escape from his medical ordeal. He had always loved music and played guitar for fun while in college.
"When I was in the hospital, I was just there for too long and I needed something to do," Miller said. "You can only play so many Xbox games or watch so many movies. I think I watched 'Moana' in the hospital like nightly. I don't know why, that was just the one that was on."
After leaving the hospital, Miller learned how to play piano. He continued to write songs and performed them for his wife, Kristen, and their three children. He was mulling whether to pursue a music career but wasn't convinced to do so until Cutler stopped at his home in Nebraska while driving from Nashville to Montana.
"He asked what I'd been doing, and I said, 'Writing songs,' and he's like, 'What?' He had no idea," Miller said. "So I played a couple for him and he's like, 'You should probably do that.'"
In May 2021, Miller released his first single, "How Ya Like Us Now," an upbeat song that was inspired by those in his small town in Nebraska who doubted he would ever reach the NFL. His next two songs were titled "I was Hoping" and "Torn Up."
Miller's first two live performances came in 2021 at the Good Life Sports Bar and Grill near his home in Omaha. He has since opened for national acts such as the Eli Young Band, Brantley Gilbert, Chase Rice, Parker McCollum, Lanco, David Nail and Miller's close friend, Dermot Kennedy, at Northerly Island, which is located, coincidentally, near Soldier Field.
Miller was accustomed to performing in front of large football crowds, but being alone on a stage was daunting for him at first.
"I was somewhat nervous to start," Miller said. "That was an intimidating thing because you play football in front of 80,000 or whatever and you've got a helmet and shoulder pads on, you've got teammates out there. You go on stage, it's just you and a guitar and a microphone or a piano and the light and you're telling stories of the life that you're living, so it's a vulnerable position and I worried about it way too much early on. Now it's just like I'm going to go and if we connect and we have a good connection through this music thing, then I'm more than happy to be up there. And if we don't, then I'm still happy because I love it."
With his two most recent singles, "Die Loving You" and "One More Night," Miller has transitioned from "not as country to singer/songwriter pop," a genre he describes as "more what I like to listen to." Moving forward, Miller hopes his fledgling career soars but that's not his primary goal.
"I've got huge aspirations of that," he said. "I'd love it to be as big as possible. My thing is I want to make a connection with music fans the way that I feel music. I don't necessarily need to be in an arena or a huge stadium. I'd be fine playing to a couple hundred people, a couple thousand people who show up and they feel the songs. That's what music is for me."
The winner of the fan question of the week and a Connie's Pizza gift card is Joe D., who asked: "Besides the different play styles what was the hardest thing about the position change?"
Miller: "I wasn't used to the physicality of what football was aside from getting hit. I didn't have the play-to-play contact that tight ends have just being a quarterback … so that was a challenge. The thing that helped me I think was the mental side of it, the aspect of being able to read defenses and know where everybody was at and studying that sense. Instead of just studying tight ends, I studied the entire offense as a quarterback, so that helped me with that transition. It took me I'd say a good two-and-a-half, three years, to feel at least adequate in the run game or trying to block. Running routes and doing stuff athletically just came natural and so that was more of an easy transition. But the physical part was the biggest challenge."
In closing, I'd like to thank Zach for sharing his time with me in London and discussing his football and music careers. I enjoyed covering Zach when he played for the Bears and feel fortunate that we've stayed in touch since he retired from the NFL. You'll never meet a nicer, more down-to-earth person!
