The Chicago Bears tight end position hasn’t really been right since 2014. That was the last truly good season they got from one of their players. After that, it’s been one disappointment after another. Zach Miller is probably the most tragic of them all. For brief moments it looked like the guy could become a true weapon in their offense. Yet injuries kept ravaging his body until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Still, his competitive spirit never died. That was never clearer than in 2017. Despite only playing 10 games the year before, Miller managed 439 yards and five touchdowns. He was easily the best receiving tight end on the roster. That didn’t seem to satisfy GM Ryan Pace though. He felt more was needed. So that spring he signed Dion Sims in free agency and drafted Adam Shaheen in the 2nd round.
Miller opened up to Red Line Radio about how that move both perplexed and angered him. He wasn’t afraid to tell the team that too.
“I told their ass. I was like, ‘I don’t know why the fuck you did that.’ I remember the night of the draft, I was talking to Frank (Smith)…They signed Dion (Sims), which was cool. I wasn’t going to do that on my own. We needed a dog. But when they went and got Adam in the 2nd round, I was like, ‘Shit. You guys tryin’ to send me a message out here.'”
Miller was so irritated by the decision that he sent a subtle message during training camp.
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“…So I would get custom-painted cleats, right? That year that I went to training camp, I had custom-painted cleats with a graveyard on them. There’s two headstones. One was the date they signed Dion Sims and the other one was the date they signed Adam Shaheen.”
Zach Miller must’ve used some black magic too
It’s amazing how Miller seemed to predict the demise of Sims and Shaheen before they even played a snap in Chicago. Sims managed just 180 yards in 2017 and wasn’t the best blocker either. He was off the team by the end of 2018. Shaheen managed 127 yards as a rookie. In the next two years, he made just 14 more catches while missing tons of time with various injuries.
Don’t forget Miller came from Nebraska, the same location as the “Children Of The Corn” story. Are we certain the tight end doesn’t have some nameless dark entity putting curses on people he doesn’t like? Jokes aside, it’s pretty interesting that both Sims and Shaheen crashed and burned after Miller wore those cleats to training camp. Almost an omen of things to come.