In Week 14 of the previous NFL season, Cameron Jordan sat on his couch at home, fuming.
Jordan’s teammates were in the New Orleans Superdome, wiping the turf with a New York Jets outfit that could hardly lift a finger in protest. Meanwhile, the 32-year-old defensive end was surrounded by his kids and a first-time crack at a seven-layer dip. He watched running-back Alvin Kamara rinse the Jets’ D-lines. He watched his defence force four three-and-outs in the first half and grab sacks for fun. He watched the Saints’ five-game losing streak ground to an emphatic 30-9 halt, along with his own terminator streak of 172 consecutive regular-season games and 11 playoff contests – the longest active streak of any non-kicker in the NFL. All due to an on-and-off case of Covid-19.
And Jordan was raging.
“Not because of the streak,” the ex-Cal star says nearly six months on. “Because I watched my team destroy the Jets. The Jets ! I’m not lying. You watch film on the Jets and you’re like, (Jordan leans into the Zoom camera and whispers) they suck .”
Jordan is not necessarily being funny, albeit his characteristic taunting has been in top form all morning (“I have, seemingly, given out a lot of petty shots in the last hour or so, so I’m trying to limit myself and do better” was his opening remark to a rudimentary “How are you?”).
The New York Jets did, technically, suck last season. At least by straightforward NFL metrics. They finished the regular season with a 4-13 record, third worst in the league. They finished dead last for defensive yards and points allowed.
But the Saints’ 6ft 3in hyper-competitor is not concerned with those records. He is concerned with the Jets’ offensive ones, particularly the number of rushing yards allowed (98.1 per game, 27th in the league), giveaways (1.58 per game, 28th in the league) and sacks (53, fourth-most in the league) – the sort of numbers that are candy for a player who finds himself constantly “headbutting” his coaches on the touchlines because he could give less than a whiff about rep count.
“Against the Jets! ” Jordan repeats. “That was one of those teams that you’re like, ‘they’re not only giving out wins, they’re giving out stats for everybody ’.”
The Jets finished the season five sacks behind the league-leaders Chicago Bears. And sure, it would be impudent to suggest that the Jets might have topped that inglorious list – or at the very least, leap-frogged third-place Cincinnati Bengals (55) or second-place Baltimore Ravens (57) – had one of the finest pass rushers in the game featured in Week 14.
But one look at Jordan’s sincerely devastated face makes a pretty convincing argument.
“And now they realise how bad they were last year, they’ve improved.” Jordan shakes his head and lifts his hands in faux frustration. “It’s not going to be the same [this year]!”
There exists a fine grey line between swagger and hubris. In the NFL, that line is even finer and greyer, blurred by the relentless need to dish out as much smack as humanly possible and the subsequent need to back that smack up with cold, hard performances.
Jordan has been in this game long enough to know that line intimately. And the veteran has not so much come to know it over his going-on 12-season career with the New Orleans Saints as much as construct a home upon it, fit with a room for all of his shiny laurels (three All-Pros, seven Pro-Bowl selections, two Walter Payton nominations, three NFC Defensive Player of the Weeks and 107 career sacks).
Last season, however, Jordan’s straight-talking chirp was put to the test. The New Orleans Saints suffered one of the most difficult seasons to date, from quarterback Drew Brees' retirement to displacements by Hurricanes Ida and Irma to a squad decimated by beaucoup injuries and Covid-19, forcing head coach Sean Payton to rotate between four quarterbacks and start 58 players, an NFL record.
The Saints defence, spearheaded by Jordan alongside Demario Davis and Marshon Lattimore, made lemonade out of it. They posted a ridiculous -14.0 per cent DVOA, third-best in the league, while the offence posted a -10.6 per cent DVOA, 23rd-best in the league.
Such a stark counteract is an anomaly in the game. Out of the 672 NFL seasons played since 2000, the 2021 Saints are one of just 22 teams to post both offensive and defensive DVOAs under -10 per cent. If the Saints had snuck into the playoffs, they would’ve joined only six other teams to do so with such a lopsided modus operandi. Jordan would have been owed a massive thank you.
Jordan, of course, is not surprised by any of this. He points to the quality within his ranks, the culture coursing through the locker room and the axiom that defence plainly wins championships.
“Sometimes they’re why you’re at the championship in the first place,” Jordan says.
Jordan proudly relishes the responsibility. Since his third year with the Saints, Jordan has taken on the role of leader on top of his general defensive duties. Last season, Jordan particularly shouldered the polymath role as his defensive partners and coaches began dropping around him like flies.
“You got a guy like Marcus Davenport who just had his best season yet, at nine sacks last year. He left for like six games,” Jordan says. “For five of these games I was without my starting D-tackie David Onyemata, and my starting defensive end in Marcus Davenport! It felt like I was just playing ‘I’m so lonely’ while I was playing the game.
“I’m catching the slide and the chips, because why?” Jordan breaks into song: “ Because I’m so lonely, so super lonely . But I know the ropes, and I’ve been teaching other guys how to get better and how to make each other better for the last eight years, so it’s a part of who I am. And you saw what happened after that. Sacks, pressures, all that starts falling in place when the defensive line is healthy and you know each other so well. It gets even more fun.”
Jordan believes pieces falling into place will be the theme for the Saints’ upcoming season. He refuses to refer to last season as a failure or indulge in scapegoats. “If you lose to the Miami Dolphins, you sort of deserve this,” he says.
Instead, Jordan insists the tribulations forged a grittiness and depth that poise the Saints as guaranteed Super Bowl contenders.
“We are only going to get excited about what’s now and I think because of last year, we also cultivated a lot of talent we didn’t know we had. The emergence of Deonte Harty, Marquez Callaway. You get Tony Jones (Jr.) experienced at running back. You add that to a healthy Mark Ingram, our offence is only boding for better because of the tribulations we went through.”
Slipping into Jordan’s positive slipstream is tempting. The Saints have recruited well, signposted by safety Tyrann Mathieu and wide receiver Chris Olave, presenting a roster that, when fit and firing, should ridicule opponents.
Still, roster on paper, as Jordan says, is roster on paper. It's the intangibles that entice Jordan. New Orleans would always need to wrestle with the notion that they couldn’t win without talisman Brees or tactical mastermind Payton. In an exasperating season hamstrung by unforeseen injuries and absences, the Saints took a proactive approach and proved they could do just this.
“We used to say right as long as we have Drew we can secure nine or ten wins, but we’ve shown we can win without Drew. We were winning without Sean as well,” Jordan says. “Two of the top NFC teams last year, we didn’t just beat. We beat handily. Look what we did to the Packers the first week (38-3 W), to Tampa Bay twice (36-27 W; 0-9 W).”
“We were playing with our entire second and third string offensive line and third string quarterback. We didn’t have a high-round draft pick at receiver. Coach there, coach not there. We know exactly what we need to do better to try to win a game.”
Jordan owes that capacity to trust in the locker room, evidenced by former defensive coordinator Dennis Allen taking the head coach mantle from Payton and new defensive coordinators Ryan Nielsen and Kris Richard both recruited from within the Saints’ walls.
“We’ve been trusting the same people we have for years. Talk about Damarius Davies who just got an extension – our All-Pro line-backer! Still here! And wants to get better from the previous year!”
Jordan speaks to that trust as well. He’s a 12-year one-franchise man, a breed of loyalty slowly becoming obsolete in today’s sporting world.
“I’ve been blessed,” Jordan says, taking a deep breath as, for the first time in our 20-minute conversation, the quick-fire chirpiness vanishes, revealing the sincerity that has cut him the leader of the Saints locker room for over eight years. “Blessed. Pops played with the Vikings for 13 years. I’m heading on year dozen. It’s not been a bad 25 years for the Jordan clan.”
Jordan might not have a Super Bowl ring to flaunt (yet, if you ask him), but he has distinguished himself as one of the most feared defensive talents in the NFL’s pantheon. Jordan is, of course, the first person to tell you that.
“You cannot say I’m not an elite run-stopper. I’m probably the best defensive end to hold the edge in the league. I just so happen to work really, really hard to make myself a solid pass rusher, which, I would say, year in and year out in the last five, six, seven or eight years, I’m at least in the top 10, normally somewhere in that top five,” he says. “I’m the best of both worlds.”
The stats back Jordan up, albeit stats mean little to the 107-sack man, despite his (genuine, it must be noted) frustration at not getting his crack at the Jets. It’s easy to view Jordan through the prism of a cocksure smack-talker concerned with individual records (which he has plenty of). This, however, would be patently wrong.
“I try to tell my young guys, don’t worry about stats. Stats come and go. But the way you take to the game, the way you study film, the process is what you have to enjoy and honestly, it was ringing true this season.”
The perception is one Jordan can appreciate after 11 years in the league. It's easy to forget that Jordan went until Week 17 of his rookie season before recording his first sack, a period of struggle in which Jordan recalls questioning his abilities.
“My rookie year I was like, ‘Do I suck?’ No, they told me. I had to wait my turn for third down, but I was like I can pass rush, but they didn’t really believe me. I was getting sacks but they were late hits, hitting the quarterback too hard, intentional grounding.
“Some things just weren’t stacking up my way but 106 sacks later, 10 years later, it’s like, you know, you can have just one sack as a rookie and be okay.”
This season, Jordan faced a similar drought, failing to record his first sack until Week 7. This time, there was no flapping.
“It’s not about me. If I can make my teammates better, we’re good. In that same seven-game streak where I was sackless, my guy Tanho Kpassagnon had four or five sacks during that span. Payton Turner had one. Guys that were eating and feeding off our work, so you didn’t have to put your hand on it.
“There are always going to be corrections in the market. You better beat me to a sack because I’m going to get home more often than not. And then you end up with a season 12.5 sacks and you’re sat right where you would be.”
At 12.5 sacks, Jordan recorded his joint-third best season and ranked joint seventh-best in the league, alongside Los Angeles Rams’ Aaron Donald and New England Patriots’ Matt Judon. It’s congruous with the rest of Jordan’s impressive season, epitomised in his seventh Pro-Bowl honour.
Such dividends are promising. Jordan’s contract with New Orleans – restructured in March to create crucial salary cap space – runs until 2024. The Saints will need their veteran defender in top form if they hope to win a first Super Bowl berth since 2010 and Jordan’s first.
Not that he’s nervous. This is a player who won’t leave the game with any boxes unchecked, even if, technically, there are some. That simply isn’t the Cam Jordan mentality. Besides, he has already laid down his season prediction: 23-14, Saints over Denver Broncos at Super Bowl LVII.
“Hopefully it's 32-14. Because if we’re up by two touchdowns, with four minutes left, I get to gun to play like a Red Zone tight-end.” Jordan rubs his hands together hungrily. “I’m gunning for it. I need one.”
The comment is classic Jordan, forever craving the biggest bite of the competition pie, and some. That might have been the case in Week 14 had Jordan unleashed on the Jets. Instead, he made do with a forced fumble and two sacks in Week 15 against Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“I’m not out of production,” Jordan says with a smile. It would be foolish to file the warning strictly under smack.
Cam Jordan is taking in the best of Britain this month before his New Orleans Saints return to the capital for the NFL London Games, when they will face the Minnesota Vikings on October 2nd at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
