OK, fine.
Dallas Goedert is probably the best athlete in the family. But that hasn’t always been the case. Emily Hrabik, his oldest sister, was a basketball star and two-sport athlete in college. Goedert may have scored 1,000 points as a high school basketball player, but it took him until his senior year. She did it as a junior.
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Megan Ochsner, who is about two-and-a-half years younger than Hrabik and two-and-a-half years older than Goedert, was a college volleyball standout. She used to outmuscle Goedert all the time on the trampoline when they were fighting for a ball thrown in a game of 500.
“You couldn’t find three more competitive humans,” says their mother, Mary Carlson, who has a compelling case for the top spot in her own right. Softball was her favorite, and anyone in Britton, S.D., can probably tell you that Carlson led her team to four straight championships in the highest division of the state’s largest softball tournament in the early-to-mid ’80s.
Perhaps that’s why Carlson was so intentional about raising, pushing and coaching three athletes. She knew they had good genes. She also knew playing sports would keep them out of trouble. And, as a single mother who moved her three children from a town of about 100 to a relatively big city of Britton (around 1,200), maybe she knew sports could be her kids’ ticket to college.
Goedert, then, was bred by competition. Ask him now about the “basketball decathlon” and a wide, Grinch-like smile covers his face. What felt like every day of their summers was spent in the gym taking turns doing 10 sets of 60-second shooting drills in a row, from layups with each hand to shots from both blocks, both elbows, free throws and a sprinting finish with more layups, all while their siblings rebounded for one another. Like any desperate parent or coach, Carlson gave the kids an incentive. Fifty cents for finishing the drill, a dollar for beating your high score (Goedert remembers a slightly higher payout, perhaps youngest-child inflation). Things did not always end calmly.
“None of us like to lose,” said Goedert. “I’m sure there were multiple times where I was timing and I’d be counting their numbers in my head and I’d stop them at 58, 55, not let ‘em get those extra shots in so I could win. Someone would hit the ball out of the way so you’d have to get it. They wouldn’t be rebounding their best. Pretty much everything we did we have competitive parts of it because we were so competitive.”
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Even Christmas. To this day, you have to win a card or board game in order to open a present.
“It’s basically what I grew up with,” said Goedert. “If-you-didn’t-win-you-didn’t-eat kind of thing. It was always a lot of fun. It’s not like it ever ended up in fights or anything, but it just taught me that I love to win.”
If all of this sounds like the kind of origin story dreamed up by a head coach who never stops talking about “competition,” that’s true. To those closest to him, Goedert’s football career has been the story of being in the right place at the right time, even if it didn’t always seem like it. Now, he’s one of the NFL’s best tight ends, a jack-of-all-trades for one of the league’s most dynamic offenses.
“I’m just living out all my dreams that I had as a kid,” he says.
A quick trip through the broad strokes of Goedert’s football career.
He played everything growing up, from basketball and baseball to swimming, wakeboarding and unicycling. As a gifted athlete in a small town, success came easy.
A pastor in the stands at a high school game 90 minutes from Britton couldn’t keep his eyes off the kid playing linebacker, quarterback, tight end and running back all in the same game. He quickly called up the South Dakota State head coach, who said he had never heard of Goedert. The pastor, Carl Larson, saw Goedert a few months later dominating the competition as a discus thrower and made one more phone call.
South Dakota State head coach John Stiegelmeier relented and went to watch Goedert play basketball. He was underwhelmed by the kid’s effort, but recognized the athletic ability. Goedert accepted a walk-on opportunity instead of taking a Division II offer or playing Division III basketball.
A confluence of injuries, ineligibilities and staff turnover helped Goedert emerge atop the South Dakota State tight end room as a sophomore. Challenged by the strength coach to take his pro potential seriously, Goedert committed to the weight room in earnest for the first time, earning the team’s award for top lifter and a full scholarship. He became a star, with back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons, All-America honors and, notably, two wins over rival North Dakota State.
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The Eagles then took Goedert in the second round of the 2018 draft, their first selection after winning the Super Bowl — a game in which the winning touchdown was scored by the team’s top tight end. Goedert spent his first three seasons playing behind and alongside Zach Ertz. Ertz was then traded midway through the 2021 season. One month later, Goedert signed a four-year extension with about $35 million guaranteed.
Back to now. In the one year since Ertz’s departure, Goedert has 57 catches for 854 yards, fourth among all tight ends. His 2.4 yards per route run are the best among tight ends and trails only wideouts A.J. Brown, Cooper Kupp, Deebo Samuel, Justin Jefferson and Tee Higgins. Efficiency-wise, he has been an elite pass catcher.
“He runs routes like a receiver,” Brown said.
As a receiver, Goedert’s superpower is his ability to gain yards after the catch. Like in Week 3 against Washington, when Goedert caught a screen pass, turned upfield to run between blocks by Jason Kelce and Isaac Seumalo, niftily bunny-hopped over a low, diving tackle attempt and sped into the end zone for a 23-yard touchdown. Post-Ertz trade, Goedert is averaging 8.3 yards after the catch per reception, tops among tight ends and behind only Samuel, Austin Ekeler and Joe Mixon among all players with at least 50 catches during that span.
“With the ball in his hands, he’s special,” said tight ends coach Jason Michael. “He’s a physical runner. … He’s got the ability to make guys miss like a receiver or a back would. But he’s also got the ability to run through guys. And I think his (spatial) awareness on the field — he has a natural feel of being able to find space and run.”
Of course, because he’s a tight end, being a receiver is only part of Goedert’s job.
“Motherf—er can block,” says Lane Johnson. “About 90 percent of the f—in’ tight ends in the league can’t block worth a f—, and he’s in the 10 percent that can.”
That was not always a given. As a draft prospect, Goedert’s blocking ability was questioned in large part because he was so rarely asked to do it in college. Then he was drafted to play next to Ertz and blocking became a necessity in order to get on the field. Now, he’s one of the best in the league, which is no surprise to his family. As his oldest sister says, tell him he’s bad at something and then see what happens.
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In the same post-Ertz timeframe, the Eagles have run for more yards than any team in the league. Because they have one of the league’s best offensive lines, one of its best rushing quarterbacks and one of its true all-around tight ends, the Eagles are able to pound the ball out of 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers) unlike any team in the league. Of those league-high 179.6 rushing yards per game, 105.1 have come in 11 personnel at a clip of 5.3 yards per carry.
“We’re a big inside zone team,” Kelce said. “Inside zone, you can handle their backside end one of two ways, either by reading him or blocking with a tight end. And that ends up being a very crucial part of the play, and the fact that we can do both of those with Jalen (Hurts) and Dallas makes it very, very difficult to try and figure out how to stop it. Because if a D-end’s gonna not try and bomb the gap, Dallas is very good at blocking it. If he wants to do that, then you just don’t block him and read him, and the quarterback’s wide open. That leads to some big-time issues in how a team handles the backside end.
“So much of stopping the run in the NFL I feel like comes down to if that tight end can hold up on the backside end (or) outside linebacker, whoever that player is.”
Goedert’s emergence as something of a skeleton key for the offense also means his presence in the locker room has grown. Teammates say he’s more confident now, not that he ever lacked self-belief. At 27, he’s the happy-go-lucky elder statesman of a tight end room that has no one else with more than two years of NFL experience.
“There’s a time to work and there’s a time to have fun, and you better have fun playing football,” says Michael. “This group of guys in the tight end room is as close as (any) that I’ve been around, and that’s a testament to Dallas.”
Like Ertz before him, Goedert is more of the lead-by-example type. Teammates notice.
“I think he’s probably the (most) underrated f—in’ dude in the NFL,” said Johnson. “I love watching him play. Looks like he’s having fun. Makes crazy-ass catches. Makes unbelievable blocks. Does all that without having an ego.”
Not everyone agrees.
“I don’t know about that,” says cornerback Avonte Maddox when asked about Goedert being underrated. “I mean, I praise him 24/7, he definitely get enough credit.”
When Goedert was drafted, there was some uncertainty within the Eagles’ building about how the kid from small-town South Dakota would fit into the melting pot of an NFL locker room. Those concerns were quickly assuaged, as his easy-going nature made him a natural. Just like he can do everything as a football player, he can get along with anyone. It helped that he found a new sibling.
GO DEEPER
‘It’s like big bro and little bro’: Dallas Goedert and Avonte Maddox, second-year Eagles and inseparable housemates
Goedert and Maddox became fast friends, connected by Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman Brian O’Neill, who worked out with Goedert in the pre-draft process and played with Maddox in college. Goedert and Maddox quickly realized it would make sense to live together, which they did for about three years until moving into separate houses this offseason that are just five minutes apart. They still commute to and from work together.
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“He always kind of needed somebody to go with him,” said Ochsner. “In high school, I was a senior, he was a sophomore and there were times he just had to go pick up papers for basketball or something and he goes, ‘Megan, can you just come with me?’ I’d be like, ‘Go, it’s right there, you don’t need me to go with you.’ He was always like, ‘Mom, can you come with me? I can’t do this by myself.’ Like, ‘Yes, you can, Dallas!’ … He’s a very outgoing personality when he needs to be but he also likes somebody to hold his hand too. So I think that was Avonte.”
Maddox calls Carlson “Momma” and looks for her in the stands before games after finding his own family. Goedert’s sisters talk about Maddox like a brother and tease him for never making the trek to Britton, which Maddox says is unfair. He can’t wait to finally see their small town and the bar that’s in a flower shop. And because they’re like family, they compete. Speed solitaire, board games such as Sequence and Spot It! — even the occasional egg toss. Whenever Goedert’s family is in town, it’s on. Usually, that means whoever’s on Carlson’s team gets the win.
Goedert’s mom is thankful the two found each other. She says her sleepy, laid-back son and the peppy Maddox complement each other well. She also has the perspective only a mother can in recognizing Goedert’s fortune. If everything hadn’t fallen into place at South Dakota State, who knows where he’d be. If he had been forced to start right away on a different team, he may not have developed into such a well-rounded player. Maybe learning from Ertz helped him in the long run and kept his body fresh.
On the field, Goedert plays like a man possessed. In her mind, Ochsner still thinks of Goedert as the little brother she can beat up whenever she wants. Then she watches him sledding defenders backward to make way for a long Hurts touchdown run and realizes times have changed. It’s also easy for them to still think of him as a kid because, well, he acts like one. Like at practice one afternoon, when he realizes he doesn’t need the hat he’s wearing and doesn’t have pockets, so he stuffs it down his pants instead.
Goedert, the new homeowner, has gone about decorating like he’s the child protagonist in “Blank Check.” One of the first things he bought was a basketball shoe candle. Hrabik was there in September two days before the Eagles’ Week 2 Monday night game when a package arrived. It was a remote-controlled car.
“I got a couch in there, and I got a TV,” says Goedert. “And then I went and got a pickleball net, I went and got a basketball hoop for the pool. I didn’t care about the inside, I just wanted the fun stuff. That’s what I care about.”
The pool is actually where Goedert first dominated. He was something of a swimming prodigy, breaking state records as a 7- or 8-year-old. There’s a picture of him before a race with a temporary tattoo on his back that reads, “Expect no mercy.” Ask him about it now and he makes sure to say he would beat anyone in the locker room in a race, even if his shoulders have gotten too big for the butterfly. There’s one famous family story about a race he won, then moments afterward he emerged from the pool crying because his aunt told him he had broken a record. He thought he was in trouble for actually breaking something.
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The story is played for laughs, but there’s a hint of sadness to it. Carlson wishes she would have been able to let Goedert continue swimming competitively, but Hrabik was starting to pursue basketball more seriously and the family’s time and money were limited. None of them want to wallow in the past, but getting through those times together, along with their stepfather, Gary, is part of the reason they’re still so close to this day.
Now, Goedert’s family role is to be the fun uncle from 1,400 miles away. Hrabik and Ochsner have three children of their own, all boys for Hrabik, all girls for Ochsner. Carlson recently picked up all six from school “and the whole time I’m picking them up we’re FaceTiming him and he’s talking with them and they’re showing them all their tricks.” Ochsner’s oldest child recently decided she wants to paint her room yellow, blue, green and black in honor of the Jackrabbits and Eagles. Hrabik and her husband are trying to get their oldest, 5-year-old Tre, to get more comfortable sleeping in his own bed. Every time he does, he gets to put an Eagles No. 88 sticker onto a football field on his wall, and when the field is full, he’ll get to go visit his uncle Dallas. He’s already packed and unpacked countless times, and he’s getting really good at sleeping in his own bed.
“I felt like I was always protecting him and now I kind of feel like the roles are reversed,” Hrabik said of Goedert. “He just kind of takes care of us now.”
The jersey of Detroit Lions tight end T.J. Hockenson hangs in Goedert’s locker at the NovaCare Complex, a vestige of their swap following the Eagles’ Week 1 victory. “Keep setting the standard,” Hockenson wrote. “Love watching you play!”
Goedert relishes finally being recognized as one of the league’s best at the position. He took pride in attending the inaugural Tight End University in 2021, an event organized by Travis Kelce and George Kittle to gather tight ends from across the league to trade stories and tips as members of what they believe is an unheralded position.
Goedert left early, though. He had a softball tournament to attend.
More than 400 teams annually travel to Bismarck, N.D., for the McQuade’s, a slow-pitch softball tournament founded in 1976. It’s the same tournament Carlson and her family dominated almost 30 years ago. In 2021, the extended family put together a men’s and women’s team, motivated to play in front of Carlson’s father, Gordon Phillips, one more time before he died. He had been Carlson’s coach once upon a time. Carlson suited up again, along with Megan (Emily would have been listed on injured reserve with a childbirth designation and rejoined the team in 2022). They did well enough to earn a fourth-place trophy. Goedert and his cousins took home first place in their division.
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As Goedert says, “Family is more important than hanging out with buddies that I got to meet through my job.”
That job settles the debate about who the best athlete in the family is. It just doesn’t mean he’s the best at everything.
“He’s as fun to watch playing softball as he is playing football,” says his mother. “His base running is phenomenal. And his skill with his glove is almost as good as his mother’s.”
(Top photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)