There’s a laughing lineman in the deepest corner of the locker room. There’s a tick-a-tang-atickety-tang of rhythmic strums on a carbon fiber guitar. There’s a thought: How does Jordan Mailata fit his massive fingers on those frets? There’s another lineman pulling up a chair. It’s Brett Toth. Does he need anything? Nope. Toth just likes to listen to Mailata sing and joke and talk passionately about football and music and life.
Who doesn’t? C.J. Uzomah was lounging on a neighboring couch a few days earlier. The tight end was talking with Mailata about musicals and movies. The animated film ‘Coco,’ of all things. How its weighty premise snuck up on them both and made them cry. How Mailata had watched it on the flight to last year’s Super Bowl, where he attended a few promotional events, and needed to collect himself before getting off the plane. How the Australian-born rugby player-turned-NFL-tackle identified with the main character, Miguel, and the kid’s journey to fulfill his dreams as a musician while managing the approval of his family.
“Maybe that’s what resonated with me,” Mailata told me later. “He’s finding himself, and he thinks he has this idea of like where he comes from, his belonging, his belongingness. And it turned out to be all bulls—. Kind of related to that! I was like, ‘Damn, I thought I belonged to the rugby league.’ And that was bulls—. My calling is here.”
Here. Here’s a second couch. Landon Dickerson dragged it parallel to the other one this week. “Might as well,” the left guard shrugged. Other teammates kept pulling up chairs to chat before practices. Backup quarterback Kenny Pickett sometimes sprawled out on a beanbag. Might as well make it like the campfires the O-linemen build during their hangouts in right tackle Lane Johnson’s backyard. Mailata is gregarious in both settings, his teammates say. He strums and sings and spars verbally with a vocabulary that’s as colorful as his Aussie accent. Might as well create another space in which the gregarious giant they voted one of seven team captains can fulfill his calling.
Mailata is reaching peak maturity in his seventh season with the Philadelphia Eagles. He’s the ideal blend of mischief, mentorship and menace — a 6-8, 365-pound left tackle whom Johnson says is “having an All-Pro type of season.” Any remnant of the rookie who’d never played football before entering the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program is buried beneath two contract extensions and the dozens of defenders he’s driven into the turf. He’s the highest-graded offensive lineman through 13 games, according to Pro Football Focus. He’s a punishing run blocker who’s paving pathways for Saquon Barkley’s historic season. He’s a safeguard who’s surrendered one sack this season.
“He’s a rock of this foundation,” Johnson said.
Maturity is partly knowing when (and when not) to be mature. Morale requires a little mirth. OK, maybe just a smidgen more. Cam Jurgens says their crew is no longer welcome at Concord Country Club in nearby West Chester. Mailata was “a liability on the golf course,” the Eagles center grinned. Mailata drove the cart wherever. His shouts carried across holes. Before a groundskeeper ultimately arrived, Jurgens tried filming one of Mailata’s swings, but braced himself when he saw through the screen a club hurtling toward him.
“I survived,” Jurgens said. “I do have the video.”
In Eagles circles, videos of Mailata are valuable mementos. His candor can be captivating. In one moment, he can be the comedian. The next, a direct voice dispelling drama.
Amidst the late-season collapse in 2023, after a Week 17 loss to the Arizona Cardinals, Mailata told an inquiring reporter, “No,” coach Nick Sirianni had not “lost the locker room,” then ended the scrum “because that last question just pissed me off.” Collapse-oriented questions abounded in July when Mailata expressed, “I’m about goddamn tired of talking about last year.” On Wednesday, Mailata further extinguished hubbub about Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown’s relationship (stirred partly by fellow captain Brandon Graham): “We are moving on. It is the Pittsburgh Steelers this week. Not the A.J. Brown and Jalen show.”
Mailata was once the underdog winner of a position battle with 2019 first-round pick Andre Dillard. Now, Mailata embodies the stability the Eagles have long fostered while fielding one of the NFL’s best offensive lines. He’s a large reason why the transition of leadership after Jason Kelce’s retirement has been seamless. Mailata and Dickerson both signed offseason contract extensions through the 2028 season. They’ve been sharing duties once held by the future Hall of Famer.
On the first day of training camp practice, Mailata made the linemen run sprints for “unacceptable” mistakes. Mailata used to talk to the group before games. Dickerson filled in while Mailata was on injured reserve and “makes it look so easy,” Mailata says he now leaves the pre-game speeches to Dickerson. They also hosted a Halloween party for the team in Center City. Their friendship makes for an interesting pairing (and party): the outgoing Aussie and the folksy native of Hickory, N.C., who bought a zero-turn lawn mower after inking his new deal.
“I got stuck playing beside him, sadly,” deadpanned Dickerson, a 2021 second-round pick. “Forced me over there. They won’t let me leave. So, we just kind of had to become friends, I guess.”
“He’s just one of those one-of-a-kind guys,” Chicago Bears lineman Matt Pryor said of Mailata by phone.
How could Pryor forget? In 2018, the Eagles drafted Pryor and Mailata in back-to-back rounds. After they met, Pryor said Mailata told him he’d watched the draft. “He thought I was going to be a prick,” Pryor laughed. “I don’t know. He said I just had that look.” They became “basically like brothers,” Pryor said. They roomed together for a year-and-a-half in an apartment near Broad Street. They decompressed together as rookies under position coach Jeff Stoutland’s hard coaching: Mailata fiddling with a guitar and keyboard, the first big purchases of his rookie contract; Pryor staring at his big-screen TV. When they moved out, Mailata traded his instruments for the TV. Pryor still plays that keyboard. The guitar is in storage.
“I can’t do guitar, man,” said Pryor, citing his 6-7, 332-pound frame. “I tried. My fingers are too fat.”
Mailata tried teaching Pryor, anyway. Jurgens, whose guitar was an impulse buy from watching concerts in Nashville, has gotten a few pointers, too. It’s kind of discouraging being taught by Mailata, they agree. They’ve seen Mailata compete on FOX’s The Masked Singer. They’ve heard Mailata sing with The Philly Specials (Kelce and Johnson) in yet their third Christmas album. They have a difficult time imagining that a guy so comfortable in his skin — a guy who once joined Darius Rucker onstage at Barefoot Country Music Fest — once wanted nothing to do with the spotlight.
.@jordan_mailata knows a THING or two about scoring big! 😉
Watch his full reveal interview about his time on #TheMaskedSinger on our Facebook page. 👀 pic.twitter.com/HsM9LLb5Ai
— The Masked Singer (@MaskedSingerFOX) March 24, 2022
“I never thought I was good, to be honest,” Mailata says, gripping his carbon fiber guitar.
He strikes four chords: Em, C, G, D.
Those had been the basics back home. Jordan grew up near Sydney as the fourth of five kids in a Samoan family in which music was intertwined with their Polynesian culture. All of Tupai and Pereseti’s children played multiple instruments. They all sang. Tupai taught the guitar to his eldest son, Moana, who taught his younger brother Daniel, who taught Jordan. They jammed around the house. They sang in the church choir, leading hymns translated into Samoan. They were the main members of their high school’s unofficial band.
An unofficial band? Yes, Condell Park High was always in need of one for every major function. That’s how big music was in their pocket of the world. Any time the entire school gathered in the main hall for a given reason — an award ceremony, a presentation, anything — they’d have a band play a song at the start of the function, the middle and the end. But it wasn’t really a concert vibe. There wasn’t any dancing. It was just an entire student body of music-oriented families, sitting in their seats, staring and judging what they heard and saw. Kind of awkward, right?
“A hundred percent,” Jordan says. “Why do you think I liked singing in the back? And it wasn’t a big school hall or something. Everything was jammed-pack, and I was like, ‘F—.’”
Wherever the family performed, Jordan was always the harmonizer. That was partly because of his age. But the arrangement was fine by him. His sister, Sesa, the oldest of the five, would take the high harmony, and he’d take the low. Then, when Sesa switched for the lead for a song with either Mo or Daniel, Jordan would go high and his brother would go low. They had a good thing going until Daniel graduated. Then, Jordan, just entering his “grade 9” year, had to drag his guitar to the front of the stage.
Filling out the rest of the band wasn’t too difficult. Music was a major subject at their high school. The state would send a third-party tester for their yearly exams, in which each student had to perform four songs in a band made up of their classmates. (Jordan says he placed first.) He’ll never forget his first school function after Daniel graduated. They played “Say You Like Me” by We The Kings.
“That’s the cringiest song ever,” Jordan cowers. “F— me.”
Did Jordan pick it?
“Yes!” he confesses. “That’s the worst song.”
Still, his fingers find their familiar holds:
“I’m never going down, I’m never giving up
I’m never gonna leave so put your hands up
If you like me then say you like me
Woah, oh, oh, oh”
The lineman doubles over in laughter.
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! I’m f—ing cringing!”
At the song. At his teenage angst. At the vulnerability of a kid who was willing to feel the heat of reddened cheekbones and play through the nervous shaking of his limbs. That’s the only way he could become emboldened. That’s why it was meaningful when his brothers came back for his graduation and performed “Magic” by B.o.B, with Jordan leading at the piano instead of rhythm guitar. That’s kind of why “Coco” later made him cry. That’s what Jordan tried to tell Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson when they felt self-conscious in their first studio sessions together.
“I was like, ‘Man, who gives a f—? Just rip it,’” Jordan says. “‘Just rip it, man. It’s just you and the mic. For crying out loud, you play in front of 60,000 fans. You’re singing in front of eight people!’”
Listen to their confidence in their latest album, Jordan says. Listen to Johnson’s polished baritone on “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Kelce “sings five of the damn songs,” Jordan says, and “Maybe This Christmas,” in which the former center sang with Stevie Nicks and unseated Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” for the No. 1 Christmas song of the season. Neither truly had stage fright. Kelce had played baritone saxophone in high school. Johnson had starred in his high school’s one-act plays.
“I think they’ve just unlocked the path that they’ve always had,” Jordan says.
Did that help you…
“Yes,” he smiles, having already made the connection. “That confidence was always there. I just needed repetitions. I was basically forced — just like here — forced into crazy-ass positions to learn the game as fast as I could.”
Silence in Italy was as sweet to Mailata as music.
It was March. He was at last honeymooning with his wife, Niki. He was at last able to reflect, able to even process the tornado that had been the last two years.
Mailata strongly believes everything happens for a reason. Consider how he met Niki. During OTAs in 2018, Mailata, Pryor, tight end Dallas Goedert and safety Avonte Maddox went in search of food. The others craved Chinese. But Mailata pushed for Reading Terminal Market and succeeded only because it was near other spots in Chinatown. The others forced him to set the Uber drop-off near one of the entrances. Mailata bumped into Niki there. She was living in New York. But she’d attended an award ceremony for her father and they’d just had lunch.
“I think it’s fate,” Mailata said.
Time sped up. Mailata proposed in May of 2022. The Eagles marched to Super Bowl LVII. They lost to the Kansas City Chiefs by a last-minute field goal. Mailata bashed a fridge in the locker room with gloved fists as Johnson tried to console him. After flying home, Mailata numbly resumed wedding plans. His phone rang while getting fitted for a tuxedo in New York. His father was in the hospital. He’d suffered a heart attack on the plane ride back from the Super Bowl. Mailata booked a flight and was in Australia the next day. His father was placed in a medically induced coma. Mailata spent his offseason there. He felt guilty leaving for OTAs. There’s nothing else you can physically do, his mother told him. It’s OK for you to go.
“We just went straight from being at the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill and f—ing underwater,” Mailata said.
Mailata called Sirianni and Stoutland and informed them he might need to return to Australia during OTAs. But his father recovered. In an emotional reunion, Mailata’s father attended his son’s wedding in California that July. And then the 2023 season began and unraveled. And then Kelce retired. And then, finally, Mailata had a chance to breathe on his honeymoon. He reflected on how he could barely afford a train ticket six years before. He recognized his gratitude for staying in a nice hotel — many nice hotels.
“That’s when I was like, ‘Wow, you’ve come a long way,’” Mailata said. “‘And you’ve still got so much farther to go.’ And I’m excited about it.”
He returned to Philadelphia recognizing an opportunity. He absorbed the ongoing narrative that the Eagles offensive line wouldn’t be the same without Kelce and relished the opportunity to prove it wrong.
“That pissed me off,” Mailata said. “Because I was like, ‘Oh, well, f— the rest of us.’ Like, you know? This is a five-wheel drive. This is a five-wheel drive. It’s not like one guy. Kelce did so much for us. I’m not writing that off. But it kind of made me mad. I was like, ‘All right, we’re gonna show you this year.’”
Mailata dug into a Kelce-inspired adage: Effort. Always live with effort. He arrived at training camp in pristine shape. He’s consistently played 10-15 pounds lighter than what he weighed last year. He’s noticed how it’s helped him change direction faster, move quicker in the open field.
He’s challenged his teammates in practice, the weight room and at the facility’s ping-pong table. He connects with younger tackles in his own ways, like Johnson once did for him. Mailata waits out the rush hour traffic by battling backup tackle Darian Kinnard in best-of-20 ping-pong marathons. They’ll cackle and curse and often crap out before reaching eight games. They’ll shower up, grab food and talk about football, life or absurdities on the way to their cars.
“Jordan is more worried that other people are taken care of before he is,” Sirianni said. “That’s a sign of a really good leader. I really admire that about him.”
Sirianni’s brother, Mike, the head coach at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., attended OTAs with his coaching staff. After one practice, Sirianni looked across the field and saw Mailata and Johnson talking to Mike’s offensive line coach for 30 minutes. He called his brother over. What in the hell are they talking about? The tackles had talked shop the whole time.
“I have goosebumps thinking about that,” Sirianni said.
The culture-focused coach recognizes the importance of his 27-year-old captain. As the Eagles offense manages recent frustrations during its nine-game win streak, the organization can be confident that cooler heads like Mailata will help them prevail.
As a scrum of reporters broke away from Mailata after Wednesday’s practice, Kinnard caught his teammate’s eye and raised a ping-pong paddle.
Mailata grinned and went to grab his own.
(Top photo of Jordan Mailata: Jay Biggerstaff / USA Today)
