Bengals RB Zack Moss eyes return from broken neck, tempers expectations for 2025 season

Cincinnati Bengals running back Zack Moss could have hung up his cleats. The team could have released him. Instead, after he decided he wanted to keep playing football, Moss inked an amended contract, cutting his salary for the second and final year of his deal nearly in half from $3.5 million to $1.8 million. And now he has an opportunity to return from the broken neck that sidelined him for the second half of the 2024 season.

Moss opened his first year in Cincinnati as the team's featured back, but he began ceding carries to Chase Brown and in Week 8 broke his C6 vertebra in three places. The diagnosis came as a surprise to him and everyone in the franchise, Moss said to The Athletic, as he displayed only limited symptoms -- namely the loss of feeling in some of his fingers.

About eight months later, Moss is back with the team for training camp. He must return to football shape before he can begin practicing, but he remains committed to making a return and seeing his career through.

"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."

With Brown established as Cincinnati's top backfield option, Moss has a clearly defined ceiling for his second season with the franchise. The demands of returning from a serious injury only further cloud his outlook.

To get back into game action after spending this offseason as a self-described "couch potato," though, would be a victory in itself.

"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."

The broken neck derailed what looked poised to be another solid, albeit unremarkable, season for Moss. He closed the campaign with a personal-low 224 yards and two touchdowns in the smallest sample size of his five-year career.

It could be difficult to return to peak production, which for Moss came in 2023 with the Indianapolis Colts when he started eight games and turned in 183 carries, 794 yards and five scores. He could still carve out a role as a pass-catcher, as he thrived as a versatile weapon out of the backfield throughout his career with the Buffalo Bills, Colts and Bengals.