The NFL ‘quit on him’ but Panthers TE Jordan Matthews refused to shut door on career

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Practice just started, but Jordan Matthews’ No. 81 jersey is already drenched in sweat.

The 11-year pro — who made a mid-career switch from wide receiver to tight end and was promoted to the Carolina Panthers’ 53-man roster last week — has already gone through a rigorous pre-workout routine.

He drove to Mooresville just before 5 a.m. to meditate and study the Bible for 90 minutes in his friend’s hyperbaric chamber, downed a gallon of water with salt, and spent roughly 30 minutes cycling through a range of coordination and soft tissue exercises.

He does all of that to “bulletproof the body.” So, the former Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers pass-catcher feels great before individual and team reps begin.

As “Goin Baby” by Charlotte-based rapper DaBaby blares through the loud speakers at practice, and his teammates start getting hyped up for the workout, Matthews’ internal soundtrack drowns out the practice tunes.

“Winning football. Winning football. Winning football,” he repeats in his head over and over again.

He’s obsessed.

And while some might look at Matthews’ unflinching sense of dedication and scoff at his will to hang around the NFL after several years of being told “no,” his teammates and coaches will tell you that his determination is the reason he’s still on a practice field at this point in his life. And they’ll typically follow up by saying the Panthers, a team coming off an abysmal 2-15 season, are better off for it.

“I think it’s inspiring,” tight end Tommy Tremble said. “If you do (the extra routine) once or twice, people are going to be like, ‘That guy’s a little crazy.’ But, if you’re consistently like that, especially as a vet, especially with him already having success in the league, and tasting that (success), and having his ups and downs, and still putting in that work — I believe it rubs off on everyone.”

“If you want to know how to get to Year 11, you just look at him, and see how he works … like what his daily process is,” safety Jordan Fuller said. “Like honestly, that’s really what’s got him to this point.”

Making the 53-man roster was a major accomplishment for Matthews, who has played in just four regular-season games since 2020. He hasn’t caught a pass in a meaningful game since November 24, 2019.

And yet, he’s still running routes and chasing after a Super Bowl ring.

“This obviously isn’t the finish line,” Matthews said. “It’s definitely a marathon and, you have to have a mindset of, ‘How do I help this team reach the end goal in, hopefully, February?’ I’ve been on teams where that was the goal. And so that’s the only way I know how to train.”

As Matthews and the Panthers prepare for Sunday’s Week 1 matchup against the New Orleans Saints at Caesars Superdome, the site of his last meaningful touchdown grab — a 37-yard touchdown snag in a 2018 divisional-round playoff game with the Eagles — The Observer sat down with the NFL veteran and spoke to those who’ve worked with him to get insight into how he has reinvented himself at this stage of his career.

Quick rise, faster fall

During Matthews’ first three years with the Eagles, he caught 225 passes for 2,673 yards and 19 touchdowns. Those numbers dwarf the outputs of Panthers legends, Muhsin Muhammad and Steve Smith, during the first three years of their respective Carolina careers.

Matthews — a 2014 second-round pick — served as a key cog for Chip Kelly’s fast-paced Philadelphia offense for two seasons before helping Doug Pederson settle in as a rookie head coach in 2016. But in the middle of the Eagles’ 2017 training camp, Matthews was shipped off to Buffalo in a trade for cornerback Ronald Darby.

Matthews spent one injury riddled season with the Bills, appearing in just 10 games and producing 25 catches for 282 yards and a touchdown. He then watched Pederson, Darby and his former teammates hold up a Lombardi Trophy after winning Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis just a few months later.

“It doesn’t feel that far away to be honest for me,” Matthews said. “The hardest thing I think about (during) that time was I could tell where the team was trending and so not to be able to be a part of the fruition of that was tough.”

After the miserable stint in Western New York, Matthews went looking for another fresh start, landing with the Patriots in free agency during the 2018 offseason. However, a hamstring injury derailed his ability to compete in camp, and he was eventually cut.

Matthews would resurface in a second tour of duty with the Eagles, who were dealing with several wideout injuries in 2018. Matthews would go on to produce 20 catches for 300 yards and two touchdowns in 14 regular-season games with Philadelphia. He also had a highlight touchdown catch in the divisional-round loss to the Saints.

After his second Eagles run, Matthews signed with the 49ers in 2019.

Matthews was cut by the 49ers following training camp due to the numbers game at wide receiver, but he was eventually brought back briefly later that year. He ended up signing with the Eagles (again) for a two-game stretch before returning to the Bay Area, where he spent the next two years bouncing on and off the practice squad.

“They kept bringing me back, but I was still pretty low on the depth chart,” Matthews said. “So, I was still there playing football, like practicing, trying to get up on game day, but that was a really good team and it was just hard to kind of break through.”

The road to reinvention: ‘No good work is done in vain’

In 2021, Matthews’ phone wasn’t ringing. He had unofficially reached his limit as an NFL wide receiver.

“It’s crazy how the NFL works,” Matthews said. “You’re out for a little bit, and they pass you by.”

Still, Matthews and his wife, Cheyna, watched the draft in April, and when the Atlanta Falcons selected tight end Kyle Pitts with the fourth overall pick, Matthews had an epiphany.

“I look at my wife, I say, ‘Babe, that’s a wide receiver,’” Matthews recalled.

The drafting of Pitts helped Matthews realize that the league was changing. The wide receiver position was getting smaller and faster than when he entered the NFL, and because of that trend, the tight end position was also becoming quicker and lighter as well.

Matthews called 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan to pick his brain about a potential position switch. Shanahan liked the idea but he wanted Matthews to gain weight in a hurry.

According to the 6-foot-3 Matthews, the 49ers called on May 30, 2021 and asked if he could get to 235 pounds by around July 4.

“I went from like 216 or 217 to 235 in a month,” Matthews said. “Never went over 10% body fat. I didn’t eat sweets, I didn’t eat ice cream. ... I went and got a bodybuilder nutritionist.”

Matthews booked a tryout with the New York Jets, but the 49ers pounced on the new-look pass-catcher before he could ink a deal elsewhere. It was the perfect situation for Matthews, as he knew the offense and could learn from an top-tier tight end in George Kittle.

The 49ers essentially gave him a redshirt season on the practice squad to learn the new position in 2021. He worked on his blocking and special teams techniques and consulted his tight end buddies around the league for advice throughout the transition.

Zach Ertz, a three-time Pro Bowl tight end and Matthews’ teammate during his three stints with the Eagles, became one of Matthews’ trusted sounding boards.

“He was three yards short of 1,000 yards (in 2015) and the league kinda quit on him,” Ertz told The Observer. “And he looked in the mirror and said, ‘I’m going to approach this thing — I’m going to go all in at tight end.’

“And I’ve seen him transition. I’ve seen the weight he’s put on. How he’s attacked this thing. And I don’t think people understand how difficult it is to be a tight end in this league. It’s not about just running fast, being strong, being able to run routes — you’ve got to be able to do everything.”

But when it came time to earn the No. 3 tight end job in the summer of 2022, Matthews tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in one of his knees, forcing him to miss the entire regular season.

Still, Matthews, a noted man of faith, wasn’t discouraged by that adversity.

“Over that time I learned something I live by, which is ‘no good work is done in vain,’” Matthews said. “If you do good work and you put good work in every single day, you either reap a reward for yourself or it’s gonna benefit and inspire somebody else.

“And I’ve got three boys. ... If it doesn’t benefit me, I can use it to teach them something to help them along the way.”

The path to the Panthers

Matthews recovered from his knee surgery in the spring of last year. He started training with then-Tennessee Titans safety Kevin Byard, a two-time Pro Bowl safety, in preparation for the 2023 season, despite not having a contract.

According to Matthews, his agent, Steve Caric, sent film of those workouts to front offices around the league. Then-Panthers general manager Scott Fitterer apparently saw enough promise in the film to invite Matthews to work out for the team during mandatory minicamp in June of last year. Matthews knew then-head coach Frank Reich and it seemed like an ideal landing spot for the veteran playmaker.

Matthews felt so encouraged by the minicamp workout that he decided to extend his stay at a Charlotte hotel in the event of a signing, even though it meant being away from his wife on their anniversary. Unfortunately for him, the deal was routinely delayed, and Matthews was forced to wait until late October to sign with Carolina’s practice squad.

Matthews, who played just 50 total special teams snaps during the first nine years of his career, was elevated to the game-day roster once last season. He played 19 special teams snaps against the Chicago Bears in Week 10, and made a couple of big plays that never showed up in the box score.

“First play down, I’m in there (on kickoff coverage),” Matthews said. “First guy in on the tackle. I don’t think they gave it to me for some reason, but we got the tape. … I (also) helped on a big touchdown block for (then-punt returner Ihmir Smith-Marsette), me and the guys on punt return.”

And while Matthews didn’t play again during his first season with Carolina, his work behind the scenes impressed his teammates.

“What you see from him is someone that’s taking the job incredibly seriously and is a student of the craft of what he’s setting out to do,” long snapper JJ Jansen said. “I think any time you can put such a heightened focus on the job, I think every player — a player like myself that’s older than him, players that are younger than me — it rubs off as, ‘OK, I like the way that looks. I want to mimic that in my own game, in my career.’”

Every minute is an opportunity

During organized team activities, the Panthers ran a screen play with Matthews lined up at tight end. The crafty veteran attacked a safety in space, providing a productive block for the play’s targeted pass-catcher to run behind.

When the rep ended, Matthews received praise from his tight ends coach, Pat McPherson, and that sequence became a lesson for rookie Ja’Tavion Sanders. The following day, Sanders, the team’s fourth-round pick, executed the block the exact same way, according to McPherson.

Matthews, according to Sanders, has gone out of his way to mentor the rookie this summer.

“He understands the game, he understands defenses,” Sanders said. “Sometimes, he just pulls up things on his iPad, just to show me, just trying to help me out.”

“What a gift he’s been to me, because he listens, he takes instruction, he wants to get better and you love rookies like that because now, ‘OK, I can have an impact,’” Matthews said about Sanders. “I can give him something and I know he’s gonna actually use it.”

Matthews was the first player on the field throughout training camp this summer.

He’d arrive roughly 30 to 40 minutes early, work out his quads and knees and then focus on eye-coordination drills. He’d also study film of the game’s great tight ends as he’d churn his legs on the stationary bike.

Matthews isn’t the type to sit around the locker room, wasting time with uneventful chatter. He knows what’s on the line, and every minute is an opportunity for him to improve.

“He’s really in tune with his ‘why,’” McPherson said. “He has a beautiful family, little kids. And really, like his parents are great and really great role models for him. So, he’s just in part playing for his family, he’s playing for his family name, too. And … he loves the game.”

No promises, only production

Roughly three hours before last week’s NFL cut-down deadline, Matthews received a phone call from the Panthers. He was being released, despite scoring a touchdown with the starting offense in the preseason finale against the Bills.

It was the latest in a long line of football disappointments for the Matthews family.

“I’ve had to call my wife and give her bad news a lot of times,” Matthews said.

But the Panthers signed Matthews to their practice squad less than 24 hours later. Matthews then only needed to wait one more day before he was promoted to the 53-man roster.

“He fits that DNA that we’re looking for,” Dan Morgan, the Panthers GM, said on the day of Matthews’ promotion. “The guy does so much rehab, so much work on his body. And to see him at 32 years old, perform the way that he’s performed, and you see him out there every day ... He’s staying healthy, and he just looks great.”

“He’s a guy that put in the work without any promises of making another dime in this league,” Ertz said. “He was investing in his body, investing in his training, like no one else that I know. And without a shadow of a doubt, he knew in the back of his mind that he wanted to put everything he had into this go-round of getting back into the league as a tight end.”

Matthews could have let doubt creep in at any point over the past six or so years. Instead, he leaned on his family, his friends and his faith.

Matthews credits Ertz as someone who helped keep him motivated when the rest of the football universe seemed to be shutting the door on him.

“You will never have a hard time finding a person that wants you to be complacent,” Matthews said. “They’ll say, ‘Dude, you, you’re working too hard, just relax.’ … But the whole time you’re like, ‘I don’t know, this voice in my head is telling me that if I chill like that, I’m not being true to myself.’

“You need other people that also reinforce that voice in your head, and Zach is one of the number of people that does that for me.”

That voice in Matthews’ head has helped him beyond drowning out the daily playlist at practice.

It’s served as his guiding light to success. It’s what makes him wake up early before practice and drink salt water and hop in a hyberbaric chamber and avoid the ping pong table on his way to his dreams. It’s what got him to Carolina.

And it’s what’s empowered him, against many odds and many NFL gut punches, to stick around.