Former Utah football star Zack Moss grapples with NFL future following broken neck

Cincinnati • Zack Moss’ wife, Jess, always goes to training camp with him. Since Moss was drafted in the third round by the Buffalo Bills in 2020, his college sweetheart never missed.

As training camp arrived this year, however, the decision was different.

Moss looked at Jess and his growing family of 2-year-old son, Xavien, and 2-month-old daughter, Promise, while at his home in Utah, and recognized the situation had changed. They had to stay behind.

“We are in a phase of life where other things take priority right now,” Moss said. “She’s doing a great job with that. I’m doing my job to the best of my ability right now. Hopefully things work out.”

Currently, hope is the primary plan for the 27-year-old running back.

On Nov. 1 of last year, two days before the Bengals were set to play the Las Vegas Raiders, Moss learned his neck was broken in three places. He spent the next two months in a neck brace. Doctor’s orders demanded minimal movement.

“I’ve pretty much been a couch potato since November,” Moss said.

With five NFL seasons and $9.2 million in career earnings, Moss needed to decide if he still wanted to be a football player.

Playing in the NFL is scary enough. Playing in the NFL while rehabbing from a broken neck and raising two young children is downright terrifying.

When Moss spoke with head coach Zac Taylor about his situation, the topic of retirement inevitably came up. Nobody would blame him if he decided to end it. It would be a heck of a run from Hialeah Gardens, Fla., to starting running back in the NFL.

Moss immediately thought about Jess, Xavien and Promise.

“Like I told Coach Taylor, if I wanted to be done, I could have stayed at home and not left my wife and two kids by herself,” Moss said. “I could have made that call and called it a day. My intention is to be here, to do what I have to do rehab-wise and then go from there. Wherever it is at, make a decision from there. That’s all I can do.”

Deciphering what Moss can still do, along with making the ensuing roster decision, is far more complicated.

Moss racked up 3,028 scrimmage yards and 21 touchdowns in 61 games over his career with the Bills, Indianapolis Colts and Bengals. Yet, he never experienced a game like Week 8 last year against the Philadelphia Eagles.

“I started losing feeling in my arm,” Moss said. “Coming out of that game, I pretty much played that game with seven fingers.”

That was the first real sign of trouble. After a series of tests — triggered when he reported losing feeling in his fingers — the CT scan results finally arrived, and jaws dropped across the facility.

“I didn’t know, no one knew,” Moss said. “Friday before the Raiders game, it stunned everybody. I didn’t know it was broken.”

It was broken in three different places on his C6, according to Moss. He said he traced it back to Week 1 against the New England Patriots but never had any indication as time went by. It made him think about how much worse the situation could have been.

“Getting through that part still can be traumatic to some degree to say, you dodged so many bullets,” Moss said. “Playing and then practice and going to chiropractors at the same time. Lot of variables that could have happened. Thankfully, it didn’t.”

Crazy to think he went through those two months unknowingly.

“We never had any tell outside of my neck just being really sore,” Moss said. “That’s the thing people don’t know. I haven’t really spoken about it because I really don’t care too much. Team didn’t know. I didn’t know it was broken. That’s the part where I say, so many different variables. If I knew my neck was broken, I probably wouldn’t have played.”

The fact he never complained about the sore neck and played through it was in line with Moss’ personality. He’s built his reputation as a tough guy and hard-nosed football player. He’s the guy who would strap on the helmet and play through the pain because that’s what football players do.

“That’s something people don’t know about Zack is how tough he is,” Bengals running backs coach Justin Hill said. “When he was in Indy, he played I don’t know how many games with a broken arm. That’s just who he is. He’s one of the toughest people I’ve ever been around.”

Moss went home to Utah and didn’t need surgery. The plan was to let it heal on its own and avoid the complications that can come with a neck operation. That’s been the case. He was cleared in the spring for the neck issue.

In Moss’ absence last year, Chase Brown emerged as one of the best young backs in the NFL, ranking fifth in the NFL in yards from scrimmage Weeks 9-17. The run game, specifically, and portions of the offense, generally, are now schemed to Brown’s strengths. Cincinnati drafted Texas Tech’s Tahj Brooks in the sixth round in April. They also brought back Samaje Perine as a complementary big-body back.

Where Moss fits would have been murky even without his injury. The Bengals could have released Moss, but instead agreed to a reduced salary from $3.5 million to $1.8 million, via Over The Cap. However, it guaranteed an extra $375K, notable considering Moss’ situation.

Moss accepted the deal, despite being docked in pay.

“Some people make things difficult,” Moss said. “I didn’t. I didn’t partake in that. We did what we thought was best at that moment in time and called it a day and move on from that point.”

Notably, he said he didn’t hear much from the organization in the process.

“I pretty much went through that by myself, technically,” Moss said, admitting that wasn’t by choice. “That was just what happened. Didn’t happen. Not going to say much more than that. We didn’t have much communication on, ‘What am I thinking, what am I doing?’ None of that happened. It was just, ‘See how the bone heals’ and that was it.”

When Moss determined he wanted to keep playing football, a bigger problem emerged. His conditioning is a significant issue. It wasn’t being overweight, but rather being out of football shape due to a lack of activity following the injury.

When he reported to training camp, the Bengals placed him on the Non-Football Injury list, linking the reason for his non-participation to conditioning, rather than his neck.

As with his entire situation, it’s complicated.

There’s more to any possible return than getting into football shape. Moss also needs to mentally prepare to step into the A-gap and take on a blitzer or run downhill in goal line, trusting he can avoid taking on the same risk he avoided last season.

It’s one thing to be told the neck is healed, it’s another to think about your family depending on that proving true. You have to be wired a particular way to play in the NFL in the first place due to the brutality of football, both physically and mentally. Moss now fights that defining inner drive to contemplate the bigger picture.

“You just want what’s best for Zack,” Hill said. “We care about his safety. He just had his second kid. That’s a big part of his brain. That’s what’s so scary for him. You never know what could happen at the end of the day. We are all trying to do our job at a high level but we got to go home and see our families and raise our kids and be husbands and fathers and brothers. Just rooting for Zack and hope this plays out the best for him.”

Right now, it plays out with Moss working on his conditioning on side fields. Without advancement, it’s hard to see a world where he holds his spot on the roster. He says he still wants to play, but at some point, he has to prove he still can. There’s another timeline where he’s at home telling bedtime stories to Xavien and rocking Promise to sleep. He says he isn’t thinking about that option now. The fact he’s not tells the story of how badly he wants to keep going.

Moss has taken on the philosophy he knows as well as anyone: You can only control today. You never know what will come next and which play will be your last.

“I don’t have any expectations, honestly,” Moss said. “That’s not how I live my life. I just don’t put expectations on anything because I don’t want to be let down. Just going to allow my body to tell me when it is ready, and then we will go from that, and leave it up to people who have to make decisions on that. I can’t make those decisions. I just do what I got to do and things go from there.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.