(670 The Score) Almost four years after suffering a career-ending injury that could’ve been life-threatening if not for the quick work of medical personnel on site, former Bears tight end Zach Miller is enjoying life and thankful for his physical state, despite a few limitations and problems.
“I’m fine,” Miller said during an appearance on the Parkins & Spiegel Show on Thursday. “Life is good for me. My wife and kids at home, like everything is good. Physically, yeah I’ve got issues, but as far as where we’re at in today’s day and age, my leg is numb from the knee down. I got drop foot, blah, blah, blah. That’s just kind of where I’m at. I can get around and do my thing. I don’t want to turn that into a pity party for me.”
Miller, who’s now 36, suffered a gruesome injury during a game in New Orleans in October 2017, when his left leg bent awkwardly while landing in an attempt to make a catch. He would undergo an emergency procedure to repair a torn popliteal artery in his left leg, with the surgery ultimately saving his left leg from amputation. He spent 2018 on the injured reserve list and then retired in 2019.
“The nerve damage that still lingers, my leg is numb from the knee down,” Miller said. “I’ve got, I’d say, close to 50% of my motion back in my foot. I can walk without wearing the AFO brace that I used to wear to actually hold my foot up. So that’s good and bad. I don’t have to wear the brace anymore, but I got the nerve damage and all of that stuff. The day-to-day stuff that you sign up for playing that game that you love, but you never want it to end the way that it did for me. But that’s just kind of how life goes. Things happen, and you’ve got to bounce back.”
In life after football, Miller has shifted his focus to music, becoming a country singer and songwriter with a few original releases to his name already. He seriously dove into the endeavor after he suffered his serious injury, calling it his “escape,” and Miller has now written 50 to 60 songs by his estimation.
“Half of those will come to light,” Miller said. “And probably half of those that come to light will be good enough to even think about producing and half of those … will even be good enough to be put out to the public. It’s just getting everything off your chest type of thing.
“It’s really kind of that growth process of writing things that I’ve done, writing things that I want to do and just going there in between. Still working on the sound, working on the creativity of making it all work and putting it all together.”