Zach Ertz spoke to the assembled press yesterday about his lack of any effort whatsover on Sunday when sidestepping a block. He went with the I played through cramps defense, which is interesting because by that point the game was completely out of reach and all the extra effort did was pad his stats (for which I am very grateful as he was on my Draft Kings team). Zacharia:

“I understand all the criticism and stuff,” he said. “I’m not going to get into all the details on each and every thought I had during that play. I’m focused on giving this city everything I have each and every play. I promise going forward that I will do that. I think I have done that in the past. I understand how it looks on the film, but I’m not going to get into the minute details of what I saw on the play and what I didn’t see on the play, and how it impacted the play and vice versa.”

“That one play has come under a lot of scrutiny, obviously,” he said. “But if you watch that game for all four quarters, I cramped up during the game and I still went out there and battled each and every play. All I care about is what my teammates and coaches think about me. That’s all I’m focused on.”

Asked if he thought he did anything wrong on the Burfict play, Ertz said: “I think I could have gotten in his way and impeded his progress a little more to ensure that he didn’t get near Carson by any means. But like I said, there were 1,000 things going through my mind on that play. There are a millions reasons why I do stuff on each and every play.”

WOW. I am too smart for you. Basically I’m a computer out there. You wouldn’t understand, humanoid. My advanced algorithmic programming made a business decision and told me to step aside. Besides, I had a few cramps later in the game, but the defense was sitting back and letting me rack up them fantasy points, so I really battled out there, man.

Going with the “you wouldn’t understand” and “no trust me, I’m tough” defense is just about the worst way you could handle the criticism here, I’d say. But I’m sure Doug’s happy with it.