From Cafeteria to Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Next Level Chef’ for Ex-Packers Lineman

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Jared Veldheer has gone from competing in the NFL to competing in the kitchen.

Veldheer, the standout offensive tackle who came out of retirement to help the Packers’ playoff run in 2019, is competing on Fox’s Next Level Chef, the cooking show starring the legendary Gordon Ramsay. The show was filmed in September and airs on Thursday nights. Last week, Veldheer survived the cut as one of the home-chef contestants.

Now, he’ll join the full field of restaurant chefs, social-media chefs and home chefs on teams drafted by Ramsay and fellow chefs Nyesha Arrington and Richard Blais.

It all started when Veldheer, who in the NFL worked to prevent his quarterback from being eaten for lunch by opposing pass rushers, got a job making lunch at his children’s school in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“After I was done playing, I got the opportunity to work as the school lunch man at my kids’ elementary school,” Veldheer told Packers On SI this week. “So, did that for a few years and it was awesome.

“But, really, the love for food just kind of developed naturally from having to be 315-plus pounds and trying to figure out how to do it in, A, somewhat of a healthy way and, B, you can’t just be making boring, bland food or else you get burned out and you’re not going to be able to keep it all on. So, you know, always enjoyed eating.

“When my wife and I moved to Arizona [when he played for the Cardinals from 2014 through 2017] is where we had our kids and we started eating at home more and cooking after practice and just really kind of developed a new hobby in the kitchen.”

That new hobby turned into an unlikely next chapter in Veldheer’s life. He retired from the NFL in 2021, hung up the cleats and grabbed an apron at St. Paul the Apostle Elementary School in Grand Rapids.

“There was an opportunity to do it and I was like, I know the value of a good food program from when I played in the NFL and what that does for a team. Why can’t a school have that same kind of program?” he said. “So, I went in and basically tried to incorporate as much scratch cooking as possible and tried to create a nourishing, approachable way to eat clean food at an elementary school. It was pretty fun.”

Working For New Crowd

Veldheer wasn’t just cooking. He was in charge of the lunch program that produced 100 to 200 meals per day, five days a week.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of awesome things about cooking for school,” he said. “How do I make sure all those awesome things stay awesome and try to address all the other kind of pain points that make that school lunch program not that fun to run, like logistics and making special Costco runs because you can get better quality product there for cheaper than you can through a food service, that kind of stuff.”

There was pressure to protect the Raiders’ Derek Carr, the Cardinals’ Carson Palmer and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers during his playing career, which started as a third-round pick in 2010. There’s also pressure cooking for kids.

“You hear it quick,” if lunch is bad, Veldheer said. “You learn, too, that it could be the best thing in the world and someone’s not going to like it. But you can’t get away with having just a total flop. It has to be able to play to some level or else you’re just going to totally lose the kids.”

Toward the end of the 2023 NFL season, he hung up the apron, grabbed the cleats again and came out of retirement briefly with the Colts. Now, with his football career permanently behind him, he’s ready to resume what he called his “lunch lady career.”

“I’m in talks to get back in the game, so to speak,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out how to plan for next fall. It’s not officially launched yet, so I can’t say I’m back yet. I can’t do my press conference. The ink is not dry.”

Cooking With Gordon Ramsay

Veldheer’s story caught the attention of the people who do the casting for Next Level Chef, who approached him via Instagram about being on the show.

“That’d be kind of fun,” Veldheer thought. “I’m competitive. I like to compete, I think that I can make some good food.”

So, he went through the interview process and got a spot on the show.

“To get a chance to cook with Gordon was sweet,” he said. “I remember that episode last week where we go to that middle-level cook and Gordon walks in, it was pretty surreal. And then to just be cooking and have him with you at your station, kind of going through your concept and just giving some quick feedback, it was great.”

Contestant Jared Veldheer and chef Gordon Ramsay are shown during the “Next Level Chef” Season 5 “Auditions – Home Chef” episode that aired on Feb. 12 on Fox. | Photo courtesy Lorraine O’Sullivan/Fox

From shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Ramsay has a reputation for being an incredibly demanding and prickly leader and teacher. Next Level Chef shows the other side of Ramsay.

“He was so awesome to meet because he was as enthusiastic about everything in person,” Veldheer said. “I didn’t even really know what to think. He just seemed like he loved every minute of what he was doing – just so authentically happy in the kitchen. It was great to be able to pick up some things from him and be on one of his shows.”

Having started 119 games in his career, including the Packers’ victory over Seattle in the 2019 playoffs, Veldheer is no stranger to the nerves that come with competition. He felt those same things as the elevator descended toward the basement level for the first round of competition.

“It’s like you’re on the clock, you’ve got to perform,” he said. “There’s unexpected elements, there’s chaos. But, at the same time, the guy behind me, not going to get hurt if I messed up. So, there’s not that element. It’s just basically, hopefully I’m not becoming the next idiot sandwich. That’s what’s at stake here.

“I’ll tell you what, it was probably pretty equal on the adrenaline side of things. It was a huge rush. Not even when you’re making it, but when you’re just sitting there awaiting judgment on your dish. And then the best part is when you wake up the next morning and you don’t feel like you were hit by a car. That’s when I realized I was like, ‘Man, this is a great way to compete because I don’t feel like trash the next day. I can do it again.’”

On the show, a tower of miscellaneous ingredients comes to the kitchen and the chefs have 30 seconds to grab whatever they can to build a cohesive dish. At 6-foot-8 and with 33-inch arms, Veldheer had a big advantage in terms of seeing what was available and reaching for it in the mayhem of the moment, though the producers make it a bit of a scavenger hunt.

“It was great,” he said. “I was able to survey the platform pretty easily. Even though the culinary team’s pretty crafty with stashing things in the nooks and crannies of it, even having a good aerial view of it and not having anything obstructed in front of me, you kind of have to get low and peek around the edges to really see everything.

“I feel like they’re always stashing a couple gems in the far corners. At some point, you had to use your feet, as well. You can’t just get stuck with your feet in cement. You really apply all your good coaching cliches because they were applicable.”

Thursdays Are New Gamedays

The show airs on Thursday nights, and he’ll be watching along with everyone else.

“Now I get excited for gamedays on Thursday, and the best part is I get to actually sit there and enjoy it like everybody else who’s watching,” he said. “When I was playing, obviously, you can’t watch yourself live and I would never sit down with the family and watch a TV recording of the game. This is like the first time it’s ever been seen. I haven’t even seen these episodes yet, so I don’t even know what I’m going to look like.”

A day of filming took about 11 hours. It’s all boiled down to about 42 minutes.

Jared Veldheer is shown during the “Next Level Chef” Season 5 “Auditions – Home Chef” episode that aired on Feb. 12 on Fox. | Photo courtesy Lorraine O’Sullivan/Fox

Watching yourself on TV is as strange as you might think.

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Veldheer said. “It’s like when you hear your voice for the first time. It sounds really strange but then, after a little bit, you don’t even notice it, really. It just seems like it’s pretty normal. Plus, I like to think I’m halfway decent at laughing at myself, and there’s a good amount of those moments.

“And then on the flip side, it’s fun to watch all my other buddies who are on the show cook their stuff, too, because, obviously, when you’re out there competing, you’re pretty focused on what you’re doing. You don’t have time to look around and check out someone else’s process. So, it’s fun being able to see what everyone’s doing and see their style and what’s really happening behind the scenes and behind the cooks and the process.”

Jared Veldheer’s Time With Packers

While with the Patriots in Spring 2019, Veldheer retired from football. Veldheer kept training, though, and, late in the season, he told his agent, Ken Sarnoff, that he was interested in coming out of retirement. The Patriots released him and the Packers signed him a day later.

In Week 16, he played a few snaps on special teams. In the Week 17 finale at Detroit, starting right tackle Bryan Bulaga suffered a concussion and Veldheer wound up playing 35 snaps. A week later, with Bulaga inactive, he started and played 63 snaps in the playoff win over the Seahawks.

“I loved my time at Green Bay,” Veldheer said. “People ask, ‘Where was your favorite place to play?’ I’ll say, I think the most fun that I’ve ever had is when I was with Green Bay. I came in and we didn’t lose a game until it was the end of the season.

“I came in and we had won every single game that I was a part of from Thanksgiving all the way till we lost vs. San Francisco in the NFC Championship Game. I got to step in and get on the field and play and contribute to the team. To go through a little portion of the season and have no losses, people don’t understand how fun that is because that’s rare.”

Green Bay Packers offensive tackle Jared Veldheer (68) before the NFC Championship Game against the San Francisco 49ers. | Kyle Terada-Imagn Images

Veldheer came out of retirement again late in the 2020 season, signed to the Colts’ practice squad and started the Week 17 finale and a playoff game. With the Colts’ season over, he signed with Green Bay before its divisional-round playoff game against the Rams but tested positive for COVID. He came out of retirement one more time in 2023 but did not play for the Colts.

Football is part of the next phase of life. He started The Veldheer Lineman Vault to help linemen from middle-schoolers to professionals with workouts, drills and film study. An app is on the way.

“I basically was able to take a program that I could put everything that helped me during my career in the NFL and put it into action for anybody who wanted to join in who was looking for resources,” he explained. “I knew when I was a high school lineman, a middle-school lineman, even in college, there’s things that I would have really benefited from if I were able to have access to something like that. And now we live in a day and age where it doesn’t matter where you are and you can join a program like that.

“I nerd out on a lot of stuff in there and try to be as intentional as possible.”

The food adventure isn’t over, though. He’ll be one of the chefs at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, next month.

All because an unsung offensive lineman decided to become an unsung “lunch lady” at an elementary school.

“I didn’t know how I was going to feel about going onto the show,” he said, “because you got to put everything else on hold and my wife had to man the fort with three kids. I felt like training camp all over again. I was like, ‘Why am I doing this? I’ve already done this before. I don’t need to do this again.’ And I decided to go through with it, and I’m really glad I did because it was awesome. It was one of the most fun experiences of my life.”

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