Cam Jordan calls on his off day, a Tuesday in mid-December. It’s so packed with activity he doesn’t seem “off” at all. In response to a simple , he runs through his entire day to that point, roughly 7:30 p.m. in New Orleans. It takes 3 minutes, 22 seconds to list all 24 things already checked off the to-do list—film review, workout, defensive line fines, a school visit, a gift card giveaway, taping an interview with New York Giants pass rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux for Jordan’s podcast, a family photoshoot for a and so much more.
In six days, he would sprint onto the field at the Superdome for perhaps the second-to-last time. He would partake in something like a party of quarterback pressures. He would register two sacks—or double his season total—in one afternoon and for the first time since the 2022 season. He would make six tackles, three solo. He would take down rookie superstar Jayden Daniels, quarterback No. 48 on Jordan’s personal sack-victim list. And he would raise his career tally for that statistic to 120.5, 32nd place all time with three games left in perhaps his final season.
One of his sacks from Sunday would be delivered in the third quarter, on third down near the goal line, with his Saints already trailing, 14–0. Jordan would read Daniels’s decision to keep the ball rather than hand it off, to move right while most of the rest of the offense went left, and then to attempt to throw. Jordan would reach Daniels before any pass could start, would drag the quarterback down and force a field goal that allowed New Orleans to embark on a remarkable comeback of so-close-not-quite. It would end with a failed two-point conversion that would have sealed the victory and win No. 6 in this sad trombone, tense season of what-if—the one exercise Jordan has refused to engage in.
Still, the timing continued to prove impossible to ignore. Sunday marked the fifth consecutive game in which Jordan played at least half of his team’s possible defensive snaps. The start of this streak coincided precisely with the five games in which Darren Rizzi has led New Orleans, after the organization fired its head coach, Dennis Allen, and made Rizzi, the special teams coordinator, its interim czar.
On Sunday, the Saints put Daniels under perpetual pressure, so many rushes from so many bodies clad in black jerseys that it seemed like his offensive line had taken the day off. New Orleans’s defensive line played its best game of the 2024 season, registering eight sacks. Jordan emphasized the changes in how that unit prepared under a new defensive line coach, Brian Young, afterward. Jordan explained how Young emphasized what Jordan brought up on his super Tuesday before the sack bonanza, a renewed focus on fundamentals and technique. He stressed Young’s experience with this position group.
Jordan chose his words carefully. But those judiciously chosen sentences hinted at what he had not said but had felt—and for weeks. He still won’t consider what might have been, under different coaches, in an alternate universe. He will only point out what the Saints did before this five-game stretch, in contrast to what they have done during it. At this point, nothing else needs to be said.
