Exclusive column: Nowhere to hide for Eagles rookie Jordan Mailata

JORDAN Mailata had never played a down of football before he moved to Philadelphia, but he quickly discovered just how big a deal being an Eagle is.

Eagles rookie Jordan Mailata is a big deal in Philadelphia. Picture: AP

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JORDAN Mailata beat the odds to make the roster for the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and is forging a new path for Aussie athletes to make the NFL.

As he goes through his first season in the biggest sports league on earth, he’ll give you an inside look at the ins and outs of American football in Jordan’s Journal — a weekly series published every Tuesday that gives fans a unique insight into his journey.

WHEN you’re more two metres tall and nearly 160kgs, it’s hard to blend into the crowd. You can’t really hide …

So even though when I first moved to Philly I’d never played a down of football or done anything really, it didn’t take any time at all before I was already getting recognised.

I thought it was bizarre.

I kept saying to myself “this is crazy, I don’t even know what I’m doing yet!”

But wherever I went I was getting stopped in the street by people who wanted to talk.

At first, I was a bit shy. When people came up to me I would deny who I was!

Then as I went along this journey and recognised the sort of platform I was on now, and how big of an impact being a Philadelphia Eagle was, I realised I have to be fair to the fans.

To a point!

Now, if somebody comes up to me and says my name, I will say ‘yes’. If someone really knows who I am, of course I’ll give them my time.

Eagles rookie Jordan Mailata is a big deal in Philadelphia. Picture: AP

But if somebody sees me and guesses something like “do you play football?”, I’ll say “nah I just do security here … nah, I do construction out here in the city”.

It’s usually the really quiet ones who will come up to me and will try and contain their excitement — they’re the ones who will whisper in my ear “I don’t want to draw any attention to you, but can we take a photo?”

And for those ones, I’m like “yeah for sure!” That’s the little system I’ve developed to make sure the real fans can some and say hello.

There’s still a lot of Philadelphia for me to see, but I did get a chance to scour the city a bit while we were doing OTAs (the off-season training better known as Organised Team Activities).

We had three days on, four days off — then four days on, three days off. So there was plenty of downtime to ourselves.

One bloke I tend to hang around when I go out is my housemate Matt Pryor. He drives me nuts, but we’re like brothers.

He’s a sixth-round pick, wears No. 69 and like me he also plays in the offensive line so we’ve got plenty in common.

We’re gym buddies too.

As I said last week — because we’re rookies, we’re a bit behind the veterans in terms of getting our bodies physically ready. So we need to do extra work each week to catch up. And there’s a lot to catch up on!

Jordan Mailata is doing extras to catch up to his veteran teammates. Picture: Getty Images

People ask me about what is the hardest part of the NFL to get up to speed with — the physical or the mental side of it.

I would say they actually go hand in hand.

Mentally it is challenging because you’re learning things now that you’ve never known, and never had to learn.

That’s challenging in itself, but also physically you’ve got to learn the technique about how to execute that play. Each play has a different technique that you need to perform to execute that play.

When I was going through the phases: rookie mini camp, then our mini camp, then OTAs, our training camp and then pre-season, I just found out that the more repetitions I got, my body was accustoming to the NFL life and the transition was becoming much easier.

The more work that I put in, it was starting to be like night and day — I could tell the difference between a good rep and a bad rep.

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Originally published as Exclusive column: Nowhere to hide for Eagles rookie Jordan Mailata