NEW ORLEANS — Jordan Mailata was shopping for wedding suits with the lingering sting of a Super Bowl loss when he got a text that set him into motion.
He couldn’t quite process the message from his sister at first. His father, Tupa’i, suffered a heart attack on a flight back to Australia. He was traveling home after the Eagles’ loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII.
Wedding planning gave way to emergency travel. Mailata and his then-fiancée, Niki Ikahihifo-Bender Mailata, made it back to his home country in time to see his dad before he was placed into a medically induced coma.
“His organs were shutting down,” Jordan Mailata told The Inquirer. “So they had to grab every device on the planet just to keep his organs running. There was nothing we could do but wait. They just had to get him to a state where they could get his organs working so they could do the procedure. They said, ‘If we do it right now, he will die.’”
Mailata has been the ever-evolving left tackle on the Eagles’ dominant line, enduring a two-year stretch between Super Bowl appearances that necessitated him watching his dad’s long journey back from serious health complications from the other side of the world. And while Mailata says Tupa’i has made significant strides after spending three weeks in a coma with severe weight loss and diminished motor skills, he won’t be in attendance for the Eagles’ appearance in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday.
“He told me he wasn’t coming, and it kind of broke my heart,” Mailata said. “My dad’s the only one I want to see. As bad as that sounds, I miss my family, but my dad is the one I miss the most, and I wanted him to be there.”
To help paint the necessary picture of his father, Mailata typically defaults to what he refers to as “the chicken wing story.”
The 27-year-old grew up in Bankstown, a small suburb of Sydney, with three brothers and one sister and the guidance of a tough-minded man who could be characterized as eager to challenge and difficult to please. The boys played rugby, and Mailata’s younger brother, Millo, said their dad taught them at a young age that any sport that kept score wasn’t for enjoyment, but competition.
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The best summary of their dad’s personality, Mailata said, came one evening at dinner.
“I came home from school, and he baked some chicken,” Mailata said. “And I was going to town on that chicken.”
But there was one problem, by Tupa’i’s estimation.
“I wasn’t cleaning the bones.”
The next day, after getting chided for his wasteful eating habits, Mailata was determined to set things right with his disapproving dad.
“I heated up the leftovers and I was like, ‘I’m about to [expletive] this chicken up,’” he said. “Piece after piece. And he walks past me and said, ‘Jesus, son, you eat like a dog.’”
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Leaving Australia when he was 20 in pursuit of an NFL career, Mailata said he didn’t fully appreciate the tough love until he was out on his own, more than 20 hours by plane away from the rest of his family.
He’s become one of the best offensive tackles in the league in the last few seasons, making second-team All-Pro for the first time this year and even finishing 17th in the NFL’s offensive player of the year voting. According to Pro Football Focus, Mailata allowed just 18 pressures in 497 pass-blocking snaps and earned the highest grade of any offensive lineman this year.
And while the bulk of Mailata’s progress came behind the scenes as a converted rugby player who hadn’t played a football game until after the Eagles selected him in the seventh round of the 2018 NFL draft, the latest leap came from the motivation of losing to the Chiefs two years ago.
“I was sick. Sour taste, that [stuff] is real,” Mailata said. “When you have a sour taste in your mouth, it almost feels literal. You start thinking about all the plays you should have made, all the plays that you messed up. I came in the next day and got my corrections, even though there was no reason to. And it was hard to watch that.”
Shortly after that film review meeting with Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland, Mailata was hastily retreating to Australia to be with his family.
Mailata said he spent about a week at home waiting to see if his dad would rebound. Once the family learned it may be some time before his dad made meaningful progress, Mailata said he asked his mother for permission to leave home to shed the powerless feeling he felt there.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to be here right now,’” Mailata said. “‘There’s nothing for me to do here.’ I wanted to escape.”
When Tupa’i came out of his coma after three weeks, Mailata kept close tabs through FaceTime calls and text messages. He remembers the surprise he had seeing his father’s gaunt face for the first time but watched as he improved.
Football became an escape for Mailata, and those around him said it mostly was hard to tell he was going through such a difficult time.
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“I went about my business to keep me distracted,” Mailata said. “I’m really good at being where my feet are.”
Stoutland added: “It says a lot about him personally, his mental toughness, his love of the game, and his love of his teammates. I think there was a lot of support from a lot of people. I think, in his mind, he remembers that as he plays each game.”
After a few months, Tupa’i started making meaningful progress. By the summer of 2023, his doctors cleared him to join the rest of his family for a trip to the United States to attend Mailata’s wedding and form one of the left tackle’s favorite memories from the weekend, doing rehab workouts in the hotel gym.
“We’re just literally standing on a box and then sitting back down,” Mailata said. “The most basic motor movements you can think of, sitting down, standing back up again. It was cool, just spending that time with my dad.”
Added Millo: “We’re all fighters. We’re all able to overcome the adversity of the situations that are held before us. It speaks volumes to show that my dad is still here today.”
According to Millo, the family’s routine for Eagles games involves staying up until midnight or waking up at 3 a.m. local time to watch games on a live stream depending on when the team plays.
And even though Mailata’s traveling party didn’t include his father, his younger brother said he expects Tupa’i to be watching — and perhaps disturbing his entire neighborhood — from afar.
“My dad is very, very loud,” Millo said. “He’s always got something to say. Every time there’s something going on or a flag gets called against us, he’s always losing his [mind] if there’s a bad call thrown.”
The Eagles will face the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
