Eagles' Star Paying It Forward With Rookie OTs

It often gets lost after two $60 million contract extensions, a second-team All-Pro berth, and being graded by Pro Football Focus as the best player in football during what was a Super Bowl LIX-winning season for the Eagles, but Jordan Mailata was once at the bottom of the depth chart with the Eagles.

As a football novice from a rugby background in Australia, Mailata, himself a seventh-round pick in 2018, had to dig out from an ever deeper hole than this year’s three Day 3 draft picks – Drew Kendall, Myles Hinton, and Cameron Williams – on the offensive line. 

The star student of the now-branded Jeff Stoutland University, Mailata grew up in a culture where not only was the game’s best offensive line coach looking out for him, but so was everyone else.

The now eighth-year star came in when Jason Peters was running the locker room, and future Hall of Famers Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson were being groomed into leadership roles. Mailata, 28, also mentioned players like Isaac Seumalo, Halapoulivaati Vaitai, Stefen Wisniewski, and Chance Warmack as teammates who taught him to pay it forward.

That means helping the next generation along, even if that’s counterintuitive to some.

“I love our rookies,” Mailata told reporters earlier this week. “This is a great rookie class, especially in that O-line room. They work hard. I told Myles, and I told Cameron and I told Drew, ‘I don’t care if you come for my job. If you’re better than me, you’re going to better than me, but I’m going to make it damn hard for you to reach that. But I’m going to bring you along. I’m not going to kick you down.’ 

“I said, ‘That’s not how it runs here. That’s not how we do it. I bring you along because you’ll make me better.’”

The odds of anyone passing up Mailata anytime soon are not good, but the idea of helping others is designed to push Mailata as well. 

“I don’t want to be complacent,” Mailata said. “If I feel someone is chomping at my heels, it’s going to make me run faster.”

Hinton (6-foot-7, 323 pounds), a fifth-round pick out of Michigan after two years as a starter, and Williams (6-6, 317), a sixth-rounder from Texas after one starting season, are both natural tackles and could be in the mix for a swing tackle role early in their careers or even the idea of moving to guard because Stoutland has a history of tring tackle-like big bodies inside.

Mailata has liked what he’s seen from both in the early stages of offseason work, which will continue next week with three on-field OTAs.

“The effort, the grind,” Mailata said to Philadelphia Eagles on SI when asked what he liked about the rookie OTs. "A couple days we had to get on them a little bit. I got on them a little bit. Now, we’re in the second week together, man, just the effort they put in the drills. 

“When they make a mistake, they correct it the next day. That is showing that someone is coachable. It’s not just the physical side. It’s can they can learn from their mistakes, and can they apply it the next day when we’re doing that drill? 

“Myles and Cam are doing a great job.”