In his 14th and perhaps final season, Cameron Jordan wrestles with a concept that’s familiar to every NFL player. There’s an end date to his career, to chasing quarterbacks and winning games and wearing that fleur-de-lis logo on his New Orleans Saints jersey. Soon, whether it’s at the end of the 2024 season or some point not far beyond that, he will enter life as a civilian, becoming a retired professional athlete. He will enter that next phase, the one so many dread, and the one so many others embrace—what’s next?
Jordan’s lucky, though. It didn’t take him 14 seasons to consider what many athletes elect never to consider, a concept they ignore until they have to when forced by injuries, circumstances or that most inevitable of opponents, time.
