The Philadelphia Eagles have locked up a key part of their offensive line, agreeing to a four-year contract extension with Jordan Mailata on Saturday.
Terms of the deal were not released but the deal is expected to pay Mailata $64 million with $40.85 million guaranteed and could be worth up to $80 million according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
It has been an unlikely journey to the NFL for Mailata, who never played football until his draft year.
Mailata appeared on the Eagles’ radar playing rugby back home in Australia before moving to the United States. He learned to play football at the IMG Academy in Florida and was selected in the seventh round of the 2018 NFL Draft.
The 24-year-old Mailata finally earned some playing during the 2020 season and impressed the team enough to the point where he beat out 2019 first-round pick Andre Dillard for the team’s left tackle job.
“I think the rationale (on taking the chance to draft Mailata) was that this guy was so physically gifted and we had spent so much time on him that if he was going to succeed or fail, we wanted him to do it in Philly,” Eagles general manager Howie Roseman said about Mailata in a statement. “We committed when we drafted him that the first two years we were going to develop him. He’s a freak show. It was all new to him. Those first two years, I’m not sure we got a lot of return on the investment, but it started last year when he played.
“Stout continued to work with him and, like all of our young players, you could see Jordan getting better and better.”
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