Cam Jordan Is Ready for Whatever Ride Awaits in His NFL Future

 

Snowflake holograms dance across the ceiling of an Amtrak station, near a Christmas tree that’s lined by a small white fence. Style seems limited to Christmas jammies or new gear (hats, watches, kicks) attendees recently unwrapped. Many stand beside a snowman, with arms spread wide, revealing a bright red scarf.

Cameron Jordan enters this station 15 minutes before 9 p.m. He wears a Jordan brand sweatsuit from the basketball icon’s brand. Several New Orleans Saints fans, stirred by the presence of Jordan and teammates, approach. Each hesitates, unsure, it seems, of the appropriate words. Most fall back on some version of this sentiment: The 2024 season has been miserable. But it’s not your fault.

Jordan shrugs and smiles, signs autographs and poses for pictures. "Frosty the Snowman" blares from nearby speakers. A woman approaches, tentatively like all the rest, expressing how starstruck she is, right then.

Jordan puts his familial doppelganger—9-year-old Caleb, known as Tank—in a headlock. All four of his children wear Cameron Jordan Foundation T-shirts. Each shuffles with an ease familiarity made possible. All were born near the Bayou; each considers New Orleans their home. Dad will soon finish his 14th season with the only franchise he has ever played for.

Pro football loyalty, in this case, is less an oxymoron and more a family trait. But while Jordan hinted to Sports Illustrated in previous weeks that his mind was drifting toward retirement, on this night, he says 2024 will not be his final season. He says this definitively. But his family members, noting heightened emotions, are not so sure.

At 9 p.m. sharp, the Jordans head toward a magical train. Dad does not embody a feared, consistently elite pass rusher who ranks 23rd on the official all-time sacks list and 31st on the unofficial one, which includes sacks from before that became an official statistic. At this moment, despite his “office,” the Superdome, visible and looming on the walk, he more resembles any father approaching middle age, trying to squeeze in a pinch more of holiday joy while clad in a sweatsuit and plush, furry, comfy slippers.

He’s asked if the stadium that seems nearly close enough to touch, if the Superdome—the only home stadium he ever played in and, in two days, his home stadium for perhaps the final time—carries any additional significance. No, the father says.

There will be time to consider his future in New Orleans.

Jordan and his family board Car 36, its insides decorated with Christmas presents, wreaths and bells, its windows covered with images that make the outside look snowy.  

Now is not that time, not with this announcement broadcast over the train’s speakers.

“Welcome aboard the Polar Express!”

Jordan attends a New Orleans Pelicans game in December. He always dreamt of being an NBA player. / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

Cameron’s father, Steve Jordan, played 13 NFL seasons. Each began in the same place, Minnesota, with the same team, the beloved Vikings. He stands near the 50-yard-line at the Superdome on the final Sunday of 2024, after his son’s final  home game there, whether forever or for now.

Steve’s mind drifts, back to the beginning. He followed traditional family football guidelines with his son. Steve’s own mother had forbidden him from playing organized tackle football until eighth grade. She feared collisions and their cumulative impact. And, with six Pro Bowl nods and honors such as a spot on 50 Greatest Vikings lists or the franchise’s 40th Anniversary team, it worked—and quite well.

Young Cam was different, though, through natural bearing—think: toddler-sized tornado—alone. “When he was two years old, walking around the house, he would bang his head on stuff,” Steve says, and he is laughing.

The kid had energy, a blood type that seemed to mix roughhousing with pain tolerance and a six-pack of Red Bull shaken and opened all at once, every minute of every day. The boy grew up playing basketball. Dreamt of the NBA. He presented a muscular power forward, but from the old days, before the emergence of the modern archetype—tall players who grab rebounds, sink threes and move like ballerinas. His father, when prompted, compares Cam on the basketball court to Anthony Mason, longtime Charlotte Hornets and New York Knicks forward who loosely resembles comic book superhero Luke Cage. “That big dude,” Steve says, “who just muscled everybody.”

Steve, naturally, saw his son’s future in their shared sport. “That’s going to be your deal,” he told Cam, who didn’t agree, not at first. Who showed up anyway and attacked practice with annoying enthusiasm. On the Southeast Valley Destroyers, he was … just that.

His father shakes his head, as if exiting a trance. Steve would love for Cam to play an entire NFL career the same way he did. But Cam also saw his playing time dwindle this season, before an uptick after head coach Dennis Allen was fired in early November. Cam played better, more like his usual self, from that point onward.

Steve shakes his head, again. Then says he told his son to seek a trade earlier this season.

On the afternoon before the train ride, Jordan stops by Cooper Manning’s studio to film a spot for an upcoming The Manning Hour show. Four days earlier, the Green Packers throttled the Saints on Monday Night Football.

This afternoon, Jordan and the Saints are 5–10. This doesn’t shift his energy. He screams. Cracks jokes. Grabs a pillow and holds on tightly. Manning tells Jordan that Jordan taught him “style is a mindset.” Jordan says he might wear a vest to Sunday’s game. Manning notes pioneer vibes, in the “V.I.L. space—Vest, Image and Likeness.”

The host asks about his impact on New Orleans and communities all around it. Jordan answers in his distinct way, not directly answering but by sharing an anecdote that’s more powerful than expected. He’s deep like that. He says he’s always asked the same question. After every game. “What school we going to?” meaning, in the week ahead.

Those kids, tho. Man. They ask some tricky, tricky questions. “Kids got moxie,” he says. “Moxie and no reserve. That’s a scary combination.”

Show over, he walks back toward the locker room, past the Christmas tree still standing in the lobby. As he shuffles in those comfy slippers, Jordan drops another hint, the latest among many, about his future, about next season.

“How many times can I talk (bad) about the Saints before they say something?” he asks.

This season can be cleaved neatly into a before and an after. Before: After Jordan played a then-season-high 54% of the defensive snaps at Kansas City, his playing time plummeted, lowering every week from Weeks 5 through 9. He played only 10 defensive snaps against Carolina. Going into that game, Jordan says, "I was reaching a boiling point, because of lack of communication."

All season, Jordan had stressed patience, while he tried to adapt to a new role—pass rusher primarily rushing from the interior. He says, more than once and for months, that his position coach, Todd Grantham, wasn’t focused on teaching players technique, tweaking form over the course of a season, or development in general.

Jordan expected that, with such drastic changes to his role and playing time, someone on the coaching staff would, at minimum, update him on its collective thinking. He wanted someone to show him game film that laid bare any step he might have lost or any clear reason younger D-linemen were starting over him and playing far more to boot. Eventually, Jordan says, he asked, specifically, for this feedback. He still received exactly … none.

He asked them all the questions he thought coaches had answered but not shared, from his speed to his practice effort. What changed? Him? “It sounded like a resounding no,” Jordan says.

He’s on the phone, two days after the final home game. “It’s not even confusing,” he says. “It’s just like, Alright, this lack of communication … is pretty impressive!”

Eventually, he points directly at the conversation that started all the confusion. Grantham told him, before the season started, that the coach believed he had three legitimate starting-caliber defensive ends, meaning Jordan, Chase Young and Carl Granderson. Grantham also said only one factor, on-field play, would dictate who played and how much.

“It’s a testament to your legacy and how you treated camp,” Jordan says Grantham told him. “You’re going to be our starter.”

“Love it,” Jordan responded.

Only now, after 17 weeks of football, one game left in 2024, he says, “But then, clearly, (I) got zero opportunities on third down at defensive end. So that was a lie, I guess.”

One of Jordan's highlights from the season was celebrating his interception of Tampa Bay quarterback Baker Mayfield on Oct. 13. / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

 This shuffling soon became a pattern. Jordan grew more frustrated each week. He went out for each snap of the first defensive series, typically, then stayed in for one or two snaps on the next series, then shuffled in and out, in and out, like the burger chain California, for the rest of games. “You can’t catch a flow or a balance,” Jordan says. “But when you’ve played 13 years, you’ve worked on trying to catch game flow.” This, he says, led him to study more film, in order to “catch the flow faster.”

Jordan carried all these frustrations to Carolina for the end to the “before” this season. Week 9, Game 9, Nov. 3. The Saints entered having lost six consecutive games. Jordan would see the field, but not in the typical way; mostly, he saw it only through his eyes, while standing on the sideline.

At one point, those frustrations bubbled over, beyond what he could contain. Jordan approached Grantham on the sideline, ready to deliver “some choice words.”

Jordan told Grantham, per Jordan’s recollection, “Hey, man, stop throwing me in for one play, or out for one play.”

“I hear you!” Grantham yelled.

Then: Out for one play.

Then: In for one play.

More pushback.

More rotating.

At one point in another stinging defeat, Jordan says he told Allen and others he wouldn’t speak to Grantham anymore, that all communication needed to come from someone else. “I reached my threshold,” he says. “Threshold of—he doesn’t know what respect looks like, or he doesn’t know how to treat a man as a man. If anything, I’m a warrior. There’s ways to go about things respectfully.”

Still, when asked if this is as close as he’d ever come to a physical altercation with a coach, Jordan says, No! Of course not! Happens all the time, he adds, echoing a common sentiment among NFL players. “On the field, it’s not that serious,” he says.

Sports Illustrated: Both things can be true? That moment wasn’t serious but this season was?

Jordan: “Absolutely. As the Saints, we’ve lived on a moniker: See something; say something. This last year just didn’t live up to that—for the first time.”

Nine weeks of bottling that angst reached full boil that day in Carolina. Someone captured video of Jordan, heading not toward the visitors’ locker room afterward but away from it. In the video, quarterback Derek Carr follows him, hurriedly, through the tunnel. They have a brief conversation, then both head in.

SI: What do you remember about that moment?

Jordan: “At the end, I was like, ‘Man, this has to end this way?’ I was about to, you know, force my way out of there; really, I was contemplating that for the first time ever.”

SI: Your father mentioned the seek-trade advice he gave you.

Jordan: “There’s always available options. Did I find them viable? The answer is no.”

Jordan has sacked Andy Dalton multiple times throughout his career. / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

 New Orleans fired Allen on Nov. 4. Ownership elevated Darren Rizzi, formerly special teams coordinator, to interim head coach. Grantham was reassigned that week; he left, in mid-December, to become the DC at Oklahoma State. Brian Young, formerly the team’s pass-rush coach, took over the defensive line room. Young primarily emphasized, Jordan says, fundamentals and technique for the rest of the season. Young “probably should have been” his position coach all along, Jordan says.

That same week, owner Gayle Benson summoned her cabinet of team leaders for individual meetings. Jordan says Benson does so every year, or at least in the vast majority of the 14 he spent as a Saint. He describes those sessions, typically, as a “vibe check.” He found the one in November that way, too.

“Mrs. Benson had frustrations,” Jordan says. “When the owner asks questions, you have to answer. Mrs. Benson has always cared about the team, our city, the locker room. She has asked, for a number of years: How can she make the team better?”

Asked if this was their most difficult confab to date, Jordan says, No, about the same. He listened to the owner and answered honestly. That’s as far as he’ll go, not wanting to damage that relationship, which he deeply values.

Jordan will say he pushed for Rizzi as interim in that meeting. Sort of. “I think that … I think that’s … just the obvious, you know, the obvious answer is there.”

He found Rizzi trustworthy, colorful, charisma oozing behind that clipboard. He calls Rizzi an “energy carrier.” Team leaders met with Rizzi, after the Allen firing and his temporary promotion. Rizzi prefaced his speech in that meeting with a warning. Something like, as Jordan recalls, “Yo, I’m coming in hot. I’ll shoot everything straight. Something needs to change. I’m not afraid to make those changes.” Most centered on giving an entire locker room a voice. To feel heard. And real input.

Rizzi, Jordan says, “Immediately changed (those) things. Shook up the locker room, the schedule; made things more efficient; came in with energy and direction.” Players responded to his approach because, Jordan says, it gave them hope that had been lost in lockstep with seven-straight defeats.

His snaps started to accumulate, the number higher every week after Carolina: 42 on defense against the Atlanta Falcons (Week 10; losing streak, snapped), 49 against the Cleveland Browns (Week 11; victory via blowout), 32 snaps (but still more than half the total) in a close loss at home against a playoff team (Week 13, after bye, L.A. Rams).

The uptick proved him right. He had registered zero sacks this season going before Carolina. He notched his first sack the week after. He had three more over the remainder of 2024 and dozens more impact plays. Lo and behold, more playing time made Jordan more of the player he long ago became.

On the last Sunday morning of 2024, flash flood warnings from the previous night have given way to a bright sun hanging high in a cloudless sky. At the beginning of this season, Jordan could see a perfect ending: enter Revenge Mode, prove the Saints are better than expected and win a championship, at home. That scenario was, at least, in play.

As a member of the Super Bowl Host Committee, he understood what city officials wanted to display when the sports world began descending in the new year. Downtown had undergone significant renovations. Caesars had taken over the casino and made significant upgrades.

On the walk to the Superdome, signs announced an upcoming mac-and-cheese festival. Firemen sat outside their parked engine, hawking T-shirts. The new casino sparkled in that sunlight. Who dat? chants rang out.

On this walk, SI stopped anyone wearing a Saints No. 94 jersey, Jordan’s digits, then asked a question of the six fans spotted. One word to describe Cam Jordan? The answers: all-timer, love him, legend, and three variations on that theme: This sad trombone 2024 season wasn’t, in any way, on him.

Drumbeats echo down the next block, as a band marches around the stadium. There’s a map of New Orleans on one corner, and anyone who cared to connect the dots, could trace 14 seasons worth of impact from one man, the sack specialist. Nearby the map, there’s a beautiful, colorful mural painted with images of Black local legends. Written in white script near the middle bottom of the mural, it reads: a dreamer reflects himself as a dream but only while he’s dreaming.

The game that Sunday needs little, if any, recap. The Saints lost. Again. This time, to the also-reeling Las Vegas Raiders. Jordan was featured on the home program. The Saints named him captain, too. He called the toss (heads), won and elected to defer possession.

Whenever Jordan saw the field, the Raiders double-teamed him, signaling respect. But! On the initial defensive possession, Las Vegas had taken the scenic route toward the end zone. On second-and-goal, Jordan saw Alexander Mattison, wrapped him up and helped wrestle the back down for a two-yard loss.

Next play, third-and-goal, Jordan lined up outside, at defensive end. No double team. Jordan wiggled free and sacked Aidan O’Connell, bumping his career tally to 121.5. Jordan shimmied and danced as he stalked off the field. He leaned back and opened his mouth, as if to scream, then thumped his chest, that of a warrior, with both hands.

Almost as if to say: still got it.

“It’s crazy what happens with a little PT, baby!” he shouts, while sauntering past, and in the way only he can—huge man, wide frame, all swagger; like a neon sign assumed human form.

The ambling man continues ambling in neon across the football field he called home for 14 mostly remarkable years. He tells relatives that, when one Saints die-hard thanked him, the man was crying.

A relative from his wife’s side of the family says, fairly, “Dude, I hate your pants, bro.”

They’re blue and oversized, and not just oversized but like two separate blue circus tents extending from that waist. “I hate ’em, too,” Jordan says. “But do diamonds shine, regardless? Exactly!”

The other countdown clock blinks. Roughly 27:43 of on-field time remains. Jordan lingers, like he wants to stay present, like he wants to extend this moment, just a little, as long as he can.

At one point, he overhears Nikki laying out the decision her husband will soon make. “The Saints got a decision to make!” he yells from 10 feet away.

“Right,” Nikki says.

“And when they do, I’ve got a decision to make!” he booms.

23:15. He’s chopping it up with the security guards.

16:39: He’s holding up fans’ phones to capture group selfies.

Relative, to Jordan, 14:39: “Why yo kids so rough???”

Jordan, to relative, 14:37: “You know why!”

Everybody knows why. Because they’re just like … him.

9:04: Dinner reservations dominate all conversations. Which is right about when … Cam and Nikki discover, almost simultaneously, that someone in their party had put the car keys inside a backpack, while someone else in their party had already left and taken said backpack with them.

They hustle to change plans as the other countdown ticks toward zero, then huddle near midfield for a group pic.

1:54: Conversations, they’re all but wrapped. No more pictures left to smile in. Cam asks what school he’s going to the next day—and is informed they’re all still on holiday break.

Time runs out. On that clock, anyway. Security guards steal glances at watches.

“Let’s just mob,” Jordan says.

He begins his maybe-maybe not Superdome exit. Three children slip underneath the kicking net alongside him. He jokes, “They don’t know that I leave people! I do!”

It’s 5:20 p.m., sun dropping from view outside. Past the Smoothie King Center, home to the NBA’s Pelicans and his alternate pro athlete dream. Past that map, and there’s this city, his city, the one he long ago embraced.

To a relative, Jordan says, “Granted, I think I’m Hall of Fame-ish now.” Then he wonders if the only thing he never won—a Super Bowl—will hurt him.

Past the mural with the quote about dreamers.

Past another phrase painted on the same building: God’s greatest hits.

After 20 minutes of walking, Jordan stops and enters a spot near the stadium. Tacos del Cartel. There’s a sign out front that reads, roughly: Only Accept an Original. He is. They did. And that’s the part that matters.

“There will be major talks that happen after the season, I’m sure,” he says. “My mind, and how I take things, is: I’m either all-in or all-out.” He’s not the cut-me-or-trade-me type, Jordan says. He also understands the business of pro football. “I only know loyalty,” he says. But just because it’s loyalty my way, doesn’t mean that you have to be loyal to me.”

Pressed on whether there’s a chance he’ll play for the Saints again, Jordan gives a surprising answer. “Yeah, absolutely,” he says.

He’s asked if he proved something this season to himself. No. Again. He asks: Outside of Myles Garrett, what defender is celebrated in the NFL for entirely their individual greatness?

SI: “You’re saying it’s hard to celebrate?”

Jordan: “I’ve been a part of teams that won seven games in a year and had individual success. And you’re like, yay, but you want that team success. That’s why I keep playing. I want to win. I want to play for championship-caliber teams. I don’t care about …”

He holds no plans for New Year’s Eve night. He will soon wake up to another tragedy, one that took place a few miles down I-10. Bourbon Street, 3 a.m., the first early-early morning of another year. The Jordans were all sleeping when a white pickup truck drove into all the revelry, entering right where it was likely to be most packed.

At least 15 people died in this act of terror, which threatened all the rebuilding New Orleans, the city, wanted to showcase, right when said showcasing began. Much would be said about the resilience of the locals, who already know that and don’t need to provide any more proof.

This layers perspective atop the stinker of a Saints season, which feels far lighter and less important in comparison. Jordan already had that, though. Asked about the not-you sentiments, he says, “You know … nobody cares,” he says. “Nobody cares about vindication. These are small violins playing, man. All my kids are healthy. My wife likes me six days out of the week. At least six! I got people that care about me. My parents.”

He pauses, ever so briefly, for emphasis. “If all I have to whine or complain about is my lack of opportunities on Sunday … I never missed a practice, and I never missed a game. I took advantage of all the opportunities presented to me. If (the Saints) don’t want to utilize their blade, or want to use some other blades, fine.”

Pause. “Just know that the blade you used for the last 14 years is … still sharp.”

Maybe The Polar Express can help? The train/show is extra, just like him. Announcements. Audience participation. Music. Story time. Hot chocolate. Cookies. Actual bells. Real whistles.

“See, with trains it doesn’t matter where you’re going,” the “conductor” in this rolling play says. “It only matters if you get on.”

Jordan whistles when the conductor calls for whistles. He dances when one of the characters asks passengers to dance. He helps this fictional train through a fictional caribou crossing, because that’s part of the deal, because he’s a team player, in his soul.

Eventually, the actors reach the actual Polar Express story. On the surface, it’s about a young boy who lucks into visiting Santa Claus at the North Pole. But it’s really a story about friendship, bravery and the human spirit. Even more, at its core, it’s about belief.

“We climbed mountains so high it seems as if we would scrape the moon, but The Polar Express never slowed down; faster and faster we ran along, rolling over peaks and through valleys like a cog on a roller coaster,” the conductor says, reading directly from the book.

The boy in the story gets to ask Santa for the very first gift of a new Christmas season. He asks for no more than a bell from Santa’s sleigh. He gets this bell, then loses it, only to unwrap the same bell again on Christmas morning. He shakes the bell and hears beautiful sounds. His parents think the bell is broken. They cannot hear it. More of his friends express that same sentiment with each passing year. Music plays. "All I Want for Christmas" …

“Hearing that song gets me every time,” the conductor on the train says. “It makes me ask the question. Can you believe in something, even when it seems to be lost?”

Jordan, surrounded by his family on the train, begins to nod.

He believes. Always has. Even now, when his football career might seem lost.

As everyone piles off Car 36, the actors thank the crowd. “The greatest gift is the gift of friendship,” the conductor says. “Drawing a new now.”

Jordan nods again. “That’s the thing about trains, remember?” the conductor is saying as the crowd disperses. “It doesn’t matter where they’re going. What matters is deciding to get on.”

I snapped a few hundred photos from that weekend on my iPhone. I won’t delete one for a long time, if ever. The game is over, the other countdown clock has started. Cam is on the field. He spies his wife from maybe 20 yards away.

She’s already crying. He approaches, bounding more theatrically with each step.

Nikki knows him, so she knows what’s coming. “Don’t be extra,” she says, softly. “No, no, no. Don’t pick me up!”

He is. He does.

As husband lifts wife into air, their cheeks touch. It’s tender, this moment that should be printed on a Hallmark holiday gift card. “I’m good with audibles,” the husband will say later. “If we can’t find the keys, guess what? God has blessed us enough to say, Hey, we have another car, and we have other car keys.”

He leaves the stadium that night much like he left The Polar Express two nights earlier. He’s not sure where he’s headed, not exactly, and there are many decisions to make in the weeks ahead. But he knows the people who believe in him are there, alongside him, which long ago rendered the destination no more than the next city the Jordans will happen to explore, with pride, in joy, together, until Jordan’s body tells him it’s time to give up football—or all 32 teams send the same message in one offseason. (Which isn’t likely to be this offseason.)

What matters: They’re all onboard, together, ready for whatever ride awaits ahead.