We revisit gradient estimates for fully nonlinear elliptic PDEs without uniform ellipticity. In joint work with Arunima Bhattacharya and Connor Mooney, a gradient estimate was established for a special Lagrangian PDE with variable phase (the Lagrangian mean curvature equation). Micah Warren and Yu Yuan obtained a gradient estimate, in 2009 and 2010, for the constant phase equation, if the phase is sufficiently large: critical or supercritical. Because the ellipticity degenerates at the critical level, recent work has required a strictly supercritical condition on the phase. Our result includes the borderline, critical case, if the phase is merely C^2, or more generally satisfies a certain differential inequality which ensures flatness at the critical values. This provides the missing link for the Dirichlet problem for such phases.