Eagles’ Jordan Mailata was molded into a ‘Mona Lisa’ by his legendary line coach
PHOENIX – When the Jets visited the Eagles in mid-August for the first of their three exhibition games, Joe Douglas made a point of finding Jeff Stoutland.
Douglas left Philadelphia to become the Jets general manager following the 2019 season and, at that time, Stoutland, the Eagles’ offensive line coach, was still in the embryonic stage of teaching a 6-foot-8, 365-pound rugby player from Australia the fine art of playing offensive tackle in the National Football League.
The Eagles selected Jordan Mailata with a seventh-round pick in the 2018 draft knowing that the 21-year-old from Sydney knew next to nothing about playing football, let alone playing it at the highest level.
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“It was,” a blank canvas, Eagles All-Pro center Jason Kelce said this week as the Eagles prepared for Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII matchup with the Kansas City Chiefs. “It was a great canvas, but it was blank. A large, vast canvas.”
Stoutland had some time to work with Mailata before unleashing his latest work of art on opposing NFL edge rushers. Jason Peters, a nine-time Pro Bowler and future Hall of Famer, was still playing at a high level at left tackle and Lane Johnson was nicely settled in as one of the best right tackles in the league, a situation that remains intact as the Eagles get ready to play the Chiefs.
And, now, four years after the Eagles drafted Mailata, he is a terrific bookend on the opposite side from Johnson just the way Peters was for all those years. Like Johnson, Mailata is one of the best in the league at his position and that’s why Douglas wanted to find Stoutland during the preseason.
“He told me Jordan Mailata is my Mona Lisa,” Stoutland said.
Line connoisseurs might argue the Eagles’ entire offensive line is a gallery of fine art. Pro Football Focus rated Stoutland’s bunch the best in the NFL and that, of course, is a huge reason why the Eagles are playing in their second Super Bowl in five seasons Sunday at State Farm Stadium.
Kelce, a sixth-round pick in 2011, had not made any Pro Bowls before former Eagles coach Chip Kelly hired Stoutland away from the University of Alabama in 2013. He has made six Pro Bowls and been named a first-team AP All-Pro five times since working with Stoutland.
Johnson was a first-round pick the same year Stoutland joined the Eagles and under his offensive line coach’s tutelage, he has made four Pro Bowls and been named an All-Pro three times.
Isaac Seumalo, a third-round pick in 2016, has gone from being benched in 2017 after a brutal outing against Kansas City’s Chris Jones to becoming one of the top 10 guards in the league.
Landon Dickerson, a second-round pick in 2021 and the right guard, just made his first Pro Bowl in his second season.
And then there’s the Mona Lisa.
“I owe him everything,” Mailata said. “He’s the most detailed coach I’ve ever been around. He’s like my dad … my American father. It’s hilarious because the way he coaches, he coaches real tough. And he doesn’t care if you get offended because he’s doing it because he loves you. And I believe that. "
Stoutland has a long list of sayings he imparts on his linemen and Mailata has heard some of them enough that they are forever printed in his mind.
Impersonating the coach he loves so much, Mailata repeated a few of them: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Or he’ll ask, ‘What do you have on this play?’ and then he’ll say, ‘the WIL, the WIL, the WIL, the WIL, the WIL, the WIL, the WIL, the WIL.’”
The WIL is the weakside linebacker and Mailata knows the answer to that question by now.
“It’s just simple things like that which are hilarious because he’s been telling me them for five years now and he still tells them to me like it’s the first time,” Mailata said.
By his own admission, the 61-year-old Staten Island native who has not lost his New York accent is demanding of his players. That’s the way he has been doing it since he stopped playing linebacker at Southern Connecticut under former Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride in 1983 and started coaching them at his alma mater the following year.
That’s the position he continued to coach when he moved to Syracuse as a graduate assistant in 1986 until one day head coach Dick MacPherson asked a favor. He needed Stoutland to coach the offensive linemen.
“My heart dropped,” Stoutland said. “I was a linebacker. I coached linebackers. I loved setting up the defenses, the blitzes and all that.”
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Stoutland, with the help of a longtime college and NFL line coach named George DeLeone, discovered a new love.
“I loved this man with all my heart,” Stoutland said. “He passed away last year. My closest friend in the world and he taught me everything I know about coaching the offensive line. He taught me how to run a meeting. He taught me how to prepare a game plan. He taught me everything I need to know about bringing a group of guys together and from that one person giving of himself to me, I knew that this was my passion.”
Stoutland has paid it forward by becoming an offensive line coach who molds massive men into works of art, and his current group is a masterpiece that could be about to lead the Eagles to their second Super Bowl title in five years.
