Matt Leo’s Friday Night Lights Dream Reaches Eagles
The Friday Night Lights across America have steered many young men toward football.
Turns out they might have a far greater reach than that, all the way across the globe to Adelaide, Australia where a young Matt Leo fell in love with American football through television and film, particularly “Friday Night Lights.”
“Growing up, watching the series ‘Friday Night Lights,' it was an incredible thing to me,” said Leo during a video conference call Thursday.
It helps that Leo also happens to be 6-foot-7 and 275 pounds, but the one-time apprentice plumber could have been a natural fit in Aussie Rules Football as well. He played Aussie Rules and enjoyed it as a teenager it but it was more about the camaraderie with friends than anything else.
On the other hand, when Leo was watching Super Bowl XLVII between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens, he had a far different feeling.
“You see these incredible athletes play," said Leo. "It’s almost like a movie scene.”
The NFL was his calling.
On one particularly nasty plumbing job installing a drainage run-off for a bridge that required a far more compact frame, Leo decided he had to give American football a try.
“My tradesman at the time was working with me in this tight little confined space between the bridge the landmark we were working on,” said Leo. “It was a hot and humid day, about 110 (degrees) and we were crawling through this little passage and I turned to him and said, 'Man, I’m too big to be doing this. I should be playing sports.’”
Leo’s size, just like fellow Aussie Jordan Mailata, the Eagles’ third-year offensive tackle, was his opening. Any football coach can look at Leo’s frame and say ‘OK, I want to see what he can do.’
That’s exactly what happened at Arizona Western Community College in Yuma when Leo sent along his tape and asked for a workout. A couple of days later Leo was in the desert and the debate was on -tight end vs. defensive end.
Defense was ultimately the call and Leo showed so much promise that major college football came calling in the form of the Big 12 and Iowa State.
Leo proved to be a solid contributor in Ames and yet another door was open, this time the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program, the same one which identified Mailata before the Eagles drafted him in 2018.
At 27, Leo is a little farther along from an age perspective than Mailata was so the draft was never realistic, but in some ways, that’s a positive because Philadelphia will get a roster exemption for Leo to give him time to further develop, one that can last through the regular season via a practice squad exemption if the Eagles and defensive line coach Matt Burke like what they see.
Both Mailata and the other Aussie on the Birds, punter Cam Johnston, reached out to Leo when he was assigned to the Eagles.
“I’m so fortunate," he said. "They both reached out before, obviously, anyone had announced it. Jordan was the first person to Facetime me when he had seen the Twitter release that I was coming to Philadelphia so to have that phone call to be welcomed in with open arms and that excitement that Jordan had, I am completely blessed, and to have Cameron reach out to me on Instagram and the excitement to get me out there. It just wants to make me hurry up and move to Philly already.”
John McMullen covers the Eagles for SI.com and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John every day on SIRIUSXM’s Tony Bruno Show with Harry Mayes, Every Tuesday and Thursday with Eytan Shander on SBNation Radio, and every weekday on ESPN 97.3 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen
