Early into his 14th—and perhaps final—NFL season, Cameron Jordan clings to significance, possibility, symmetry and routines. So dawns another fall. It will be spent like all of the others on the New Orleans Saints’ defensive line. So resumes another push for that elusive Lombardi Trophy. So begins another symphony—of bruises, battered limbs and pain; of massages, ice baths and recovery; of interviews, workouts and practice sessions; of mentorship, community activism and fatherhood.
Plus, soon, a sharp divergence from the present. The shift looms on near horizons; the specifics, undefined. It beckons, this future, these visions of freedom, flexibility, actual free time. Jordan welcomes all; just not yet. For now, he will do as he has always done. Like on one day this August: up at 6 a.m., sauna, steam room, stretching, cupping therapy, then beach volleyball with the fam—all done, in one day, before training camp even starts.
Pundits have slept on the Saints, who will soon vault toward contender status. Jordan paid the preseason snubs no attention, same as the giddy reactions to a 47–10 bludgeoning of the Carolina Panthers in Week 1. “I mean, it’s Carolina,” Jordan says. “Nobody has been like, Oooh, snap! with Carolina for a long time. People haven’t been afraid of Carolina since Cam Newton and Christian McCaffrey were a tandem.”
Thus begins a project—The Final Season?—that will provide a window into Jordan’s maybe-maybe-not grand football finale. He will embody the latter stage of every veteran’s career. His, of course, is not that. Jordan ranks among his era’s most dominant pass rushers and most dominant defenders, period.
Lately, his brain often drifts to the 2011 NFL draft, where the Saints took the pass rusher from Cal with the 24th pick in the first round and Jordan flew to a city he hardly knew anything about. He wanted to play 10 seasons, collect more than 40 sacks and make at least two Pro Bowls. If he did that, Jordan reasoned, no one would consider him a bust. Plus, his father, a six-time Pro Bowler at tight end, wouldn’t laugh him away from the table at Thanksgiving.
As one year became two and two became 10, Jordan decided to play for as long as he was physically capable. No way in hell would he still be hanging on after 20 years. He promised to check in with his body every offseason, determining whether to return each spring. He grew up watching John Randle and Chris Doleman, pass rushers who played in Minnesota with his pops. He wanted to hit like them. He wanted to rip off the edge like Jevon Kearse and play forever like Julius Peppers. He wanted to make quarterbacks miserable, hence the job description. He also understood the NFL, all of the injuries and circumstances that would remain far beyond his grasp.
“There’s still no ‘moment’ for me,” he says in August. “Always something unexpected.”
Like one time, against the Atlanta Falcons, when Jordan played with a flu so bad he could hardly stand up. He still registered four sacks, despite needing an inhaler he rarely uses. He cannot recall the exact season—fact check: Thanksgiving night, 2019—because he’s 35, and, in that specific way, just like the rest of us.
Same as this one, says the father of four. BREAKING: “I’m officially off of diapers,” he says. “Eight years of carrying those bags …”
In mid-September, police officers in Florida pulled over Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill as he drove to Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium for a game. Like everyone else, Jordan saw the bodycam footage the Miami-Dade Police Department released. He bought neither the initial reason for the stop, nor two officers’ escalation of what he saw as a mundane matter. “They said it was for not wearing his seatbelt,” Jordan says. “What a bunch of bulls---.”
“I’ve got a biased opinion about cops anyway,” he continues. “So I try and keep my ideology of law enforcement to myself. I want this world to be better.”
His ideology stems from personal experience. But Jordan isn’t anti-police. His godmother, Jeri Williams, was the first Black police chief in Phoenix and the first Black, female chief of any major U.S. metropolitan police department. His grandfather, the one on his mom’s side, Theodore “Bear” Hutchinson, was one among the area’s first Black highway patrol officers. Both showed him not to consider law enforcement too broadly.
All of which prompted an initiative he created in New Orleans. Jordan watched a police officer in Minnesota murder George Floyd and decided he couldn’t sit idle. Previous philanthropic efforts—each part of his Cam Jordan Foundation—had focused on education, literacy, fitness and anti-bullying campaigns. His next would focus on what could be done after Floyd’s death.
This led to an idea, which led to a phone call, which led to a conversation with LaToya Cantrell, the mayor of New Orleans. Both understood the general description of crime and policing in the city. Not good, in sum, not after the federal government issued the city a decree to adopt use-of-force restrictions and transparency with its police force. Jordan’s idea centered on funding additional training. Cantrell knew of an organization that specialized in such guidance, its infrastructure already in place. A pilot program with the city’s PD had already begun.
Jordan decided to broaden that impact, partnering his foundation with Crescent City Corps, a local nonprofit that trained officers in leadership development, community engagement, racial equity and positive social change. They didn’t publicize any of their work for six months in order to better assess impact. With Jordan fully committed—he raised awareness, joined peaceful protests, donated $120,000 and further educated himself on all issues—Crescent City added 80 more officers to the program, which started with 10.
This marked real change, quantifiable progress. Same as the Hill stop reminded Jordan of what he can do, especially after football. Soon. Just not yet.
In advance of the 2024 opener, many considered Jordan’s unit the Saints’ primary strength. Defensive end Carl Granderson had a breakout campaign last season (17 starts, 8.5 sacks). Offseason defensive line additions in ’23 bolstered the unit’s depth. This spring, Saints brass added pass rusher Chase Young, a former No. 2 pick, in free agency. But depth and options, while ideal for a franchise, also meant drastic change—in this case, for Jordan.
His role began to shift late last season, when he played a career-low 70% of his team’s defensive snaps. (Jordan exceeded 90% in all of his first six seasons and hovered above 80% for the next two. His 117.5 sacks ranks 23rd in league history since sacks became an official statistic in 1982.)
Many took this dwindling playing time and saw Jordan as done, finished, washed. None knew football. Jordan was 34 years old, injured and—his words—“relegated to third down” for the final seven weeks of 2023. Washed? He recorded 12.5 sacks in ’21 and 8.5 in ’22.
Still, early into this season, Jordan had played the least amount of snaps in his career on the outside of the defensive line and his lowest percentage ever (40, through three weeks). He chose to exercise patience, in order to allow data to accumulate before assessing the change in full.
Chasing quarterbacks from one spot over might seem simple. But there are nuances to each defensive line slot, especially when switching from outside to inside. Outside rushers typically face offensive tackles and whomever the other team might keep in to help out. Inside rushers don’t deal as much with tackles (a plus) but must contend with far more combinations of blockers, from guards to the center to fullbacks and combinations of all. They’re more susceptible, the inside rushers, to chip blocks and unforeseen contact. There’s also less set-up for interior rushers, absent the three-to-four steps taken by their outside brethren. Those steps are replaced by immediate chaos almost every down.
“It’s like a pinball, spinning,” Jordan says. “You’ve got to be able to ping around in order to work, and that’s why you normally want a monster in the middle, one of those guys with size you can’t teach. Killers. And that true monster in the middle has to be a fast, twitchy guy.”
Like, maybe, him?
With Aaron Donald as a beacon of sorts—fast, twitchy, dominant from the inside—Jordan remained optimistic after two weeks where his team continued to dominate and three weeks where his role continued to shrink. In a Week 3 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, his defensive snap percentage dropped to 28, a career low, while Granderson and Young both reached at least 75%. Jordan appeared most regularly in New Orleans’s NACAR package, which utilizes three pass rushers in four-man fronts. He also began studying Calais Campbell, another feared outside rusher who shifted inside later in his career and still plays for the Dolphins.
Still, the NFL is a league of change above all else. Perhaps the Atlanta Falcons, a division rival and the opponent Jordan most disdains, would help him change direction in Week 4. After all, he sacked fellow NFC South veteran Matt Ryan more than any one defender dropped any one quarterback in NFL history—23 times in 22 games. In advance of another meeting, Jordan ramped up the trash talk, called Atlanta “fail clowns” and “dirty birds.” He continued to express all the right sentiments about his role shift, dismissing notions of entitlement and maintaining his only goal, always but especially now: to win. “It’s not about me,” he kept saying.
Still, as the Falcons toppled the Saints, 26–24, on their home field in Week 4, little changed for Jordan. Through nearly one quarter of perhaps his final season, he had compiled one pass defensed, two quarterback hurries and three tackles. He hadn’t missed a tackle, which signaled his doing all he could within new parameters outside of his control. He played 100 snaps over the first quarter of the season-(ish), good for 39% of the defense’s total. His name was also being floated in NFL trade rumors, with the Dallas Cowboys, Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars among potential landing spots. Even then, plenty of season remained to change course once more.
Fortunately, Jordan was born for contact. In basketball, his first love, he dominated in the post but often flirted with foul trouble or fouled out. He always had “this energy,” he says, making him perfect clay for a human pinball. He once got kicked out of conditioning practice for defensive linemen. He joined the linebackers. They also found him too frenetic. He joined the defensive backs. They welcomed him with arms spread wide.
“It’s innate,” he says. “I want to give everything I can on this field, because you never know when this thing’s gonna be over.”
He hopes his children inherited the combat gene. He tells his son, the aptly named Tank, that daddy is a warrior. Tank might also be one. But the 9-year-old must earn that tag. “When you prove it to me, you can own that moniker,” Jordan tells the boy. “You might never have to be. You might play basketball. You might be a …”—he spits out this last part—“wide receiver.”
The Saints won their first two games by a combined 62 points. Their offense, widely considered shaky before the season started, led the NFL in average points, at 45.5, or 11 more than Arizona, which ranked second.
Was this, finally, The Year?
Nobody in New Orleans dared to say that part out loud.
In 13 completed seasons there, Jordan has won at a high clip, at least relative to a sport where parity is intentional, designed. The Saints went 126–85 in regular seasons from 2011 through ’23, with five division titles, six playoff runs and five postseason victories. Jordan also played in seven nonplayoff seasons, including each of the past three. His 209 regular-season games played this season marked the second-most in franchise history, behind only Drew Brees.
His relationship with the city that adopted him, that made him theirs, became clearer and deeper with each passing month. New Orleans became part of him, Jordan says. He converted into a discerning consumer of jambalaya and gumbo. He hosted crawfish boils. He avoided Bourbon Street, at all cost. Additional free time from the NFL lockout in 2011 allowed him to explore. He slept for two weeks on a friend’s couch; the friend, running back Mark Ingram. Jordan walked and watched, studying French architecture, listening to those smooth jazz notes, even discerning the bounce that separates New Orleans from other great American cities.
He came to adore that soul—and the locals who fashioned it. He leaned into nearby hobbies, fishing and hiking and exploring beyond the city limits. He would fish with friends in the morning on an off day and stick around as they steered boats inland, climbed ashore, shot a pig, cut the meat off and grilled dinner. That’s when he knew that he was Cajun.
Jordan describes this relationship as “a love story,” between one city and a football icon who never left. All lack only the perfect ending, another Super Bowl, the first won two seasons before his rookie year.
To win another, at The End, would “change a lot of things for a lot of people,” Jordan says. He’s aware, because everyone in possession of a 503 area code is aware, that the next Super Bowl will take place in New Orleans, at the Superdome, his home field. In the movie version of this project, Jordan would triumph and go full Elway, the rare NFL star to retire at the pinnacle.
There’s no time to waste. There never was. Jordan took this offseason to heal—undergoing surgery, then rehab, then another climb back to full health. He went into 2024 with no injury concerns—I’m back to being like me again—and a new internal setting.
Revenge Mode, he calls it, this plan he clings to amid new uncertainty. Thirteen games remain. Plenty of time to exact as much of that as possible.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cam Jordan Clings to Revenge Mode Amid New Uncertainty.
