PHOENIX — Faced with no other choice after her singing partner bailed on one day’s notice, Rachel Small approached the biggest kid in school to ask for an even bigger favor.
“I really need your help,” she told the 6-foot-9 boy she barely knew, who walked around the yard at Condell Park High School in New South Wales, Australia, humming melodies and ducked into classes to avoid bumping his head on the doorways.
Would he play guitar and sing David Guetta and Sia’s “Titanium” with her in the local “X-Factor” spin-off? Would he save her from withdrawing or performing solo?
“Let’s do it,” he said without hesitation.
About a decade passed between that talent competition — when the teenage duo made it to the finals but couldn’t outdo the “cute factor” of a 9-year-old boy singing Ed Sheeran hits — and the phone call from Small’s mother last week that flooded her memory: Did you know Jordan Mailata is going to be in the Super Bowl?
“Jordan really had my back that day,” Small told The Post. “He was quite a gruff, rough-around-the-edges-looking guy, and then had the voice of an angel. If you were lucky enough to catch him humming — or anytime he performed — it was just as amazing and effortless as the first time you heard it.”
Sure, Patrick Mahomes can throw a football 65 yards from his knees and Jalen Hurts can run 20 mph with the ball in his hands, but can either of them stun the judges on “The Masked Singer” with a rendition of Sheeran’s “Perfect” while dressed as Thingamabob? Mailata, the Eagles’ 25-year-old left tackle, can and did, which makes him the most-talented person in Super Bowl 2023.
Six years ago, Mailata was waking up at 4:30 a.m. for jobs as a supermarket stock boy, a scaffolder, a carpenter’s assistant, a demolitionist and “whatever could pay the bills” as he pursued a professional rugby career in his home country. He had never played a down of football and didn’t care to understand the rules, so he would’ve laughed at a time traveler who told him that his life was barreling toward a four-year contract guaranteeing $40.8 million and his 44th career NFL start Sunday against the Chiefs with an expected audience of about 200 million viewers.
“I would probably have been like, ‘What ’shrooms are you smoking?’ I don’t know what the Super Bowl is. Are you talking about that concert at halftime?’ ” Mailata said. “My dreams only started five years ago. All these guys I play with have been dreaming about this since they were kids. I’m living through them.”
Susie Mobayed knew exactly how a captivated Jenny McCarthy felt on the judge’s panel before Mailata was eliminated in Week 3 of Season 7 of “The Masked Singer.”
“He was a master when he would grab that mic and eyeball people,” Mobayed, Condell Park’s principal, said. “People felt ecstatic because it felt like Jordan was singing to just you. You know how we are all worried about how we look or how we sound? He just oozed gentleness, calmness and confidence.”
Mailata spent his final six years of school among about 600 students at Condell Park, in the Bankstown area populated by predominantly low-income families from Lebanese, Arabic and Pacific Islander communities.
The Mailatas emigrated from Samoa seeking more for their five children (four boys), all of whom were musically talented. The school is ruled by strict mandatory shirt-to-shoe uniform and no-phones-allowed policies, and Mailata was the “Pied Piper” of its hallways before his 2014 graduation, Mobayed recalled.
In 30 years as a music teacher, Sandra Kessegian has had others wow her the way that Mailata did with his “lovely tenor vocals, falsetto range and ability to harmonize.” But none who later in the day went to a rugby game and “would have four guys on his back and he’s running 60 meters down the field with the ball,” as physical education teacher Kieren Frappell recalled.
“He was such an intimidating factor before the games even started: Our team felt, ‘We’ve got Jordan,’ and the other team felt, ‘Ugh, they’ve got Jordan,’ ” Frappell said. “I always felt like he would do something great, whether it was through sport or through his voice.”
But the NFL? It was only part of the conversation for laughter.
Frappell and Mailata’s friends saw “The Blind Side” — the 2009 movie inspired by Michael Oher, who stumbled into a football career because of his size. “Big Mike,” as he was known, was a late-blooming quick-learner who got drafted and started at left tackle in Super Bowl 50.
“We used to actually call Jordan, ‘Big Mike,’ ” Frappell said. “He kind of hated it. He would laugh but say, ‘Don’t call me that.’ I can’t believe that’s the position he ended up playing — and he’s going to play in the Super Bowl.”
Many of the best high school football players in the country attend IMG Academy in Florida. Top prospects train there for the NFL combine. It’s not the typical place for first steps.
“We were teaching him how to put a helmet on and how to squirt a water bottle through his facemask,” said Jay Butler, who began training Mailata in January 2018 as part of IMG’s deal with the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program. “You don’t see 6-foot-9, 360-something pounds with less than 20 percent body fat. He was raw, but he absorbed everything.”
Trying an Olympic-style overhead squat for the first time, to learn how to bend his legs with his chest upright as offensive tackles must, Mailata lost his balance and the 132-pound bar accidentally swung out in front of his body. Any experienced weight lifter knows to just abort the lift in that dangerous scenario.
“I looked at my assistant like, ‘Did you just see that?’ ” Butler said. “Not that I would want anyone to do that, but he just pulled the weight back overhead like he was picking up something super light.”
How did Mailata even wind up there? A heart condition that caused him to faint during a rugby practice at 17 years old had been corrected by emergency surgery. He returned to the pitch after a year of no sports, but the constant running overtaxed his body. A power-based sport was a better fit, and local agents mentioned an idea.
Founded in 2016, the IPP has accepted 31 players from 11 countries, only two of whom were drafted and five of whom have played a regular-season NFL game. Mailata, who played rugby for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and South Sydney Rabbitohs, had a size-agility combination that can’t be taught. Still, only two NFL teams showed up for his Pro Day workout at IMG.
“I was so happy that there was no one else there because I knew right then and there that this guy had all the 9-10 critical factors we are looking for,” Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland told The Post. “Do you know he’s going to be able to make the transition? No. It’s a credit to him because it wasn’t easy. This was learning something completely foreign.”
The Eagles dealt a future seventh-round pick to move up from pick No. 250 to No. 233, at the time near the end of the 2018 draft when selections are made during television commercials instead of anticipated announcements. Why? Stoutland told general manager Howie Roseman that the Steelers (pick No. 245) were the other team at Mailata’s workout.
“Howie remembered that and did his thing,” Stoutland said. “That’s why I love working at the Eagles so much: It’s all one.”
Homesick, afraid to let down the family he begged to let him come to America and often injured, Mailata didn’t play in an NFL game for two years. Football didn’t come as natural as his other gifts, but he put in the hours to catch up. Too many hours, maybe.
“I burned myself out my rookie year just learning the playbook,” Mailata said. “I said to myself, ‘When I get to my hotel, no more football.’ Be where your feet are. It’s truly how I survived.”
Not much surprises the player who surprised the NFL when he beat out former first-round pick Andre Dillard to start and was ranked as the Pro Football Focus’ No. 10 offensive tackle this season. But looking at a photo of Mobayed, Kessegian and Frappel on a reporter’s phone earlier this week hit a soft spot.
“I did not expect that,” he laughed.
Condell Park will relax its uniform policy Monday, when the Super Bowl airs in Australia. Kessegian is relieved because her husband just bought her an Eagles’ No. 68 jersey with her former student’s name on the back.
Mailata is not yet singing next to his teenage favorite Bon Jovi — like Kessegian envisioned he might one day — but he and fellow Eagles offensive linemen Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson did just release an album of Christmas songs.
“It brought us closer together,” Mailata said, “but it was also kind of nice to peel back the athlete layer and show that we have other talents.”
First, the NFL. Then, a music career. Next?
“I’m sure there will be a movie about him one day,” Frappell said. “And he’ll probably play himself.”
