BIOGRAPHY
Jordan Mailata was born on March 31, 1997, in Bankstown, Sydney, Australia. He is an offensive tackle in the NFL.
He played rugby league in Australia for the South Sydney Rabbitohs in the National Rugby League (NRL) in their Under 20s team.
When Mailata was 17, he fainted during a rugby workout and needed emergency surgery to repair both the upper and lower chambers of his heart. He went on hiatus from rugby for a year and then played for the South Sydney Rabbitohs. After seeing clips of him playing rugby, NFL executives invited Mailata to tryout for their International Pathway Program. He went to Florida to train, and his training was part of the NFL Network show Undrafted. Prior to training for the NFL at IMG Academy in Florida, Mailata had never played American football and admitted that his knowledge of the game was minimal. When asked what position he wanted to play, he suggested that he wanted to be a left tackle since he knew of that position from the movie The Blind Side.
Mailata was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles with the 233rd overall pick in the seventh round of the 2018 NFL Draft. Mailata became the second player to be drafted with no American high school or college experience after German Moritz Böhringer, following the path of compatriot Jarryd Hayne, who also converted from rugby league. Mailata signed a four-year deal worth USD$2.5 million with a signing bonus of $89,392.
Mailata said that the biggest mental hurdle when transitioning from rugby league to the NFL was the extensive playbook. He stated that when he first started training camp with the Philadelphia Eagles, he was handed a playbook and that it felt like "a different language." On 1 September 2018, Mailata made the initial 53-man roster for the Eagles. On 14 December 2018, Mailata was placed on injured reserve after sustaining a back injury categorised as a stress fracture, which ended his rookie season before appearing in any games.
After missing the first two games of the 2019 season with a back injury, Mailata was placed on injured reserve again on 21 September 2019.
Mailata was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list by the Eagles on 29 July 2020. He was activated from the list on 13 August 2020. On 13 September, Mailata made his NFL debut against the Washington Football Team, replacing injured rookie Jack Driscoll in the third quarter. Mailata made his first start for the Philadelphia Eagles in week 4 of the 2020 season against the San Francisco 49ers, due to an injury to Jason Peters. Mailata ended the 2020 season as a top-15 offensive tackle in the NFL from week 11, as graded by Pro Football Focus. Over the course of the 2020 season, Mailata led the Eagles in fewest sacks allowed amongst offensive linemen, allowing just 7. Mailata also led Eagles offensive linemen in pass pro snaps with 502, equating to a pass pro snaps per sack score of 71.7, which was third best on the Eagles behind Lane Johnson and Jack Driscoll.
In 2022, Mailata was named an NFC Pro Bowl alternate. Mailata helped the Eagles reach Super Bowl LVII where they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs 38-35.
