Many of the best athletes in the world are playing in this Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes can throw a football 65 yards from his knees, Jalen Hurts can squat 585 pounds, Skyy Moore is 5-foot-10 and had the biggest hands of any wide receiver at the 2022 NFL Scouting Combine. The most impressive athletic specimen in the game, although, is on the Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive line: left tackle Jordan Mailat.
After a championship season in 2017, the Eagles had just five players selected in the 2018 NFL Draft. Of those five, four are still with the team and will be big contributors in the Super Bowl on Sunday. Dallas Goedert, Avonte Maddox and Josh Sweat came to the NFL the traditional way by playing American college football. While they were in college, Mailata ran around the professional rugby field in Australia and also did demolition, scaffolding, any job to supplement his income.
Mailata was a seventh-round pick, the Eagles’ final pick in the 2018 draft. He signed a contract as their starting left tackle through 2021 that guaranteed him $40.5 million. It took a lot of work to train a person who had never played organized football before and leave him alone on that island with left tackles to protect the fullback. The reason the Eagles were willing to do whatever it took, this rugby player is 6-foot-8 and weighs 350 pounds.
He came through the NFL’s International Pathway program. A program that invites a select handful of athletes from around the world to participate in a 12-week camp that teaches them the fundamentals of soccer. Mailata was by far the most successful player.
The sports part of his story alone is enough for its own movie on Netflix, but this is a man with many talents. When asked by the media on Wednesday how he was trying to keep the week as normal as possible, he said one way was to bring his guitar with him.
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If he hadn’t spent so much time on the rugby field growing up, he might have become the Hulk Prince. Mailata has arrived Week 3 of Season 7 of The Masked Singer. He blinded the judges’ Thingamabob and he was a star Eagles Christmas Party. From the inside that massive body, there is a truly powerful tenor voice that can also strum the guitar without taking all the string off his hands after practice.
Given that he is athletically built enough with that size to play a professional surfaceper, if Laurieanne Gibson worked on him in a dance the way Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stouteland worked on him in drills, Mailata could have been the best-selling music artist of all time.
While Stouteland, Hurts and the rest of the Eagles may enjoy hearing him drop a tune every now and then, I’m sure they’re happy right where he is, holding one point while Lane Johnson holds the other.
The Eagles’ offensive game could be the X-factor in this game. If the Chiefs can’t make enough stops in the running game, Mahomes may not have enough time to put enough points on the board to win the game.
Watching all of these athletes will be a great show on Sunday, but remember that the huge guy on Hurts’ blind side has an equally big background.