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.
It didn’t take Jordan one season to understand his athletic mortality.
It didn’t even take this season when his role shifted, his snap count dwindled and a sizzling start that pushed the Saints onto lists of Super Bowl contenders gave way to six consecutive losses from Sept. 22 through Sunday.
No, Jordan always understood that football wouldn’t last forever. He watched his father, Steve Jordan, retire from the NFL after 13 decorated seasons and six Pro Bowl nods as a tight end. Pops played his entire career with the Minnesota Vikings. Cameron wanted to carve a career like that one, with roots and acclaim, as a centerpiece who lasted but knew it wouldn’t last forever, who knew it never does.
“You always know you’re close to the end,” he says two days before a pivotal Week 8 matchup against the Chargers in Los Angeles. “In the very beginning, that’s the moment your clock starts.”
That’s how Jordan chose to approach pro football. That’s the only approach he ever considered. It’s the approach he assumed from his first NFL snap, at Green Bay in the 2011 opener, to snap No. 11,821, which he clocked against the Chargers on Sunday, like so many fall afternoons that came before.
Still, he entered this 2024 season, which looks more and more like his final campaign, knowing it would be different. In prominent ways, every season is its own experiment in health and roster manipulation and camaraderie and circumstances, the combination in any year shifting fortunes from poor to promising to just plain strange.
This past spring, Jordan did what he always does. He gave his body most of February and March off, to heal and regroup, an annual exercise in reclaiming what’s lost throughout any one season. Only then did he assess the year ahead. He knew, as he detailed in the first installment of The Final Season?, the peek Jordan is allowing Sports Illustrated into his latest NFL campaign, that the Saints teemed with talent in his position group, specifically. His most talented defensive-line counterparts were younger—in most cases, especially where it mattered, much younger. They hadn’t turned 35 in July. They weren’t coming off ankle surgery for torn ligaments.
He had to cling to realism, with clear eyes and reasonable expectations, controlling what he could control. His football mortality felt heavier and closer than ever before. Jordan soon decided on a revenge tour of sorts. His would leave a final imprint on a borderline Hall of Fame career.
Jordan’s expedition of vengeance began with a physical overhaul more drastic than ever before. He hired a nutritionist to draw blood and study his body from an intake/energy standpoint—what foods brought on cell death, metabolized well, caused inflammation or helped him heal. Jordan soon went overseas, visiting Japan, Turkey and Italy with his wife. Upon returning, stomach properly stuffed with all the carbs, sweets and calories, he began a new diet. That meant intermittent fasting. That meant ridding his gut of toxins. That meant vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins.
Pounds evaporated from Jordan’s long, sturdy frame all spring and early summer. Having played recent seasons in the range of 285 to 290 pounds, he entered this one under 270 for the first time since his senior year of high school back in 2006. While the weight slipped off him, Jordan ramped up conditioning sessions. Having swapped offseason jogging routines for cycling ones years ago, he began stretching his rides through the Arizona desert from 10 miles to 15 to 20. Some routes stretched so long that, whenever Jordan entered more remote regions outside Phoenix, he dropped his pin to his wife’s phone, lest he run out of energy or find himself lost without cell service. “If I die today, …” he’d tell himself.
“It looked like a Rocky montage,” he says.
Perhaps there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. Something about cell death and athletic mortality, NFL stars, and the moments where it becomes obvious their star has dimmed. Or maybe this is simply what the end looks like, a hanging on of sorts, to this thing that was never going to last forever. Not even for Tom Brady.
In August, Jordan sensed the latest shift in his career. It was, at its essence, also a literal move—to the inside of the Saints’ defensive line, most prominently on third downs. “It doesn’t make sense to me,” he says, on this Friday in late October. “I had torn ligaments last year. Like, don’t hold that against me. Let me lose my spot.” Even then, Jordan refused to alter his approach. “That’s not up to me,” he says.
After a Week 3 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, Saints head coach Dennis Allen confirmed the obvious: New Orleans saw Jordan, in relation to its other defensive linemen, as a role player who fit best, at this point in his career, inside.
Jordan describes that missive as “my rude awakening” and “something I had to process.” Processing forced important delineations. All things were true. Jordan had entered this season in ideal shape. He could still play football as the Saints intended, their brand of “tough, competitive and smart.” He still strove for perfection in his craft. “But just because you're obsessive in draft doesn’t mean you can dictate what you’ll be given,” he says. “That dictates your work ethic. It dictates the possibility of you having opportunities.”
He pauses. He’s pulling up to the airport in New Orleans. The Saints’ plane will soon take off. Jordan will soon play in regular season game No. 217. Each, he knows, could be his last. He always knew that. He knew that when he wanted to stick in the NFL when he made his first Pro Bowl, when he signed his second contract, when he recorded his 40th sack and when he first entered conversations for league Defensive Player of the Year. He simply understands the calculus better than ever now. He gave all that he could. He can walk around with pride.
Whatever time is left, whether in terms of snaps or wins or mentorship or anything else, will be part of that same legacy. He understands that, too. He’s not done shaping. “Mortality is just that,” Jordan says. “Nobody sees themselves dying, right? But we all will, obviously.”
Still, there are moments, even in a season like the current one. Each reminds Jordan of why he continues to play football, body thudding into an opposing lineman—and sometimes more than one—on every play. Such moments, due to their scarcity this season and their bountiful tally otherwise, also remind him where he’s at in his career.
“It’s like you’re in a dark tunnel with a little bit of light,” he says.
Like: Week 6, at home, late in the second quarter, against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Mindset matters here. As Jordan had shifted inside more on pass-rushing downs this season, his overall defensive snap tally hovered far below his previous career low—it stands at 43 after eight weeks—he couldn’t force any opportunities. He could only apply the same process that had worked for so many games in so many other seasons to his new paradigm. He would be ready. Opportunities, he believed, would come.
The Saints had just dented a large deficit with an Alvin Kamara touchdown. They trailed, 27–24. Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield dropped back on second down, padded his feet and threw a pass up the middle of the defense. The attempt didn’t sail far before one of Jordan’s teammates batted it in the air. Jordan had already turned his back to Mayfield and started to sprint downfield in the event of a quick completion. He saw the pass ricochet and settled underneath it, grabbing his third career interception and first since 2017.
“Just one of those bright spots,” Jordan says.
More will come this season. Jordan knows that. Or he believes he knows that, having never endured a season quite like this season before. He’s still adjusting to becoming a primarily inside pass rusher. “I don’t know if I’m one of those guys yet,” he says. “But I think my 14-year career would say otherwise.”
Previously, Jordan said he didn’t plan to evaluate this season until roughly a quarter of it had passed. After four weeks, including the best two-game start in the NFL, the Saints were 2–2. Injuries continued to remove talented players from game plans and actual games. This is precisely why Jordan waits, removing all emotion and recency bias from evaluations.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re rolling; we’re better than we thought we were,’” he says of the early mindset. He starts listing this season’s injuries to key contributors. This list is not a short one. “We gotta keep fighting,” he says. “Maybe this is one of those years where, when we’re healthy, we have looked damn good. We just haven’t been healthy since we looked damn good.”
Asked if he will evaluate halfway through the season, like after the Chargers game or the Week 9 clash with the Carolina Panthers that’s upcoming, Jordan hedges. Yes and no. Ten games remain on the schedule, along with the Saints’ bye scheduled for Week 12. That’s plenty of time to change the narrative. But 2–6 is also … 2–6. “At some point,” Jordan says, “you have to say, this is the team we have.”
When that evaluation happens, whether it’s next week or a month from now, it won’t change the man or his approach. Jordan remains in revenge mode, even if what constitutes impact continues to broaden. He’s a mentor now, a veteran voice within a position group that’s loaded with talented, young players. He cites Carl Granderson, a 27-year-old defensive end with five quarterback hits, four tackles for loss and three sacks this season, as one cornerstone in New Orleans who benefitted from all Jordan learned along the way. He considers each younger player he mentors like a little brother.
His body, for being eight weeks in, feels great, he says. He acknowledges the obvious. It should feel better, at least, given the limited number of reps. “But this isn’t basketball,” he says. “There’s no load management. I haven’t changed my training.”
Away from the field, he recently rebranded his foundation’s efforts, complete with a name change to the Cam Jordan Foundation. It held what will become an annual gala in New Orleans in mid-October, and the money it raised will help fund scholarships for students from low-income families.
The rebrand began with a desire to do more, Jordan says, as he walked toward the team plane for another flight to another game. Same as always. Different than ever before.
“I’m going to give everyone, all of them, everything I’ve learned, everything I have. Just because I’m unhappy in my position doesn’t mean I’m not blessed and happy in my life.”Cam Jordan
For the first six years of his community efforts, he mostly paid for initiatives himself. To broaden his programming, he needed to broaden his resources. Weren’t New Orleanians, so many Saints diehards, always asking him directly how they could help? He needed to create ways to answer that question. The gala was proof of his growing ambition to help those in the only city he ever called home in his NFL career.
That Jordan disdains asking anyone for help, with anything, spoke to this season’s calculus once more. To play 14 seasons—and to broaden his impact in the community that became his adopted home—he needed to embrace discomfort. That’s pro football, more or less, especially for those who crash into others on every single snap. “I’m going to give everyone, all of them, everything I’ve learned, everything I have,” he says. “Just because I’m unhappy in my position doesn’t mean I’m not blessed and happy in my life.”
His job, as Jordan views it, is to respond to whatever factors he is given. On board the team’s plane last week, his signal began cutting in and out. “Gotta go; catch you soon,” he says, and he’s off, for another stop on a revenge tour that hasn’t quite materialized. Not yet, anyway.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cam Jordan’s Final Season?: ‘It’s Like You’re In a Dark Tunnel With a Little Bit of Light’.
