Leo chasing his dream role with Birds
Matt Leo came to America to live out a football fantasy that began when the plumber’s apprentice from Down Under became a fan of Friday Night Lights.
Leo, who hails from Adelaide, Australia, tried his hand at Australian Rules Football but found it nothing like the connection he felt from the TV series and football movie.
Tired of longing for football action, Leo reached out for help to become part of it, launching his second football career in earnest on the farmlands around Ames, Iowa.
Leo turned heads playing defensive end at Iowa State, yet went undrafted, partly because he’s a little over-aged. The Aussie, who turns 28 on May 8, did something right as he earned a shot with the Eagles through the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program.
If you haven’t seen the canceled series that’s now in rerun mode, Leo highly recommends Friday
Night Lights.
“It was an incredible thing for me,” Leo said Thursday on a conference call from Ames. “Watching that was almost like that thought of wishing you had grown up in high school and gone through college in America. I’ve felt like I was living out that dream.”
Football has been nothing short of a dream for Leo, listed at 6-foot-7 and 275 pounds, who played the edge in a 3-4 defense at Iowa State yet is so humble, he’s mowing lawns when not training for some of the people who helped him make it through college.
The International Player Pathway Program netted the Eagles offensive tackle Jordan Mailata, now bidding to win a starting job at left tackle. Mailata and punterholder Cam Johnston, also from Australia, were among the first to congratulate Leo for getting the nod.
“Before anyone had announced
it, Jordan was the first person to FaceTime me when he saw that Twitter announced I was coming to Philadelphia,” Leo said. “To have that phone call and to be welcomed in with open arms and that excitement that Jordan had, I couldn’t have felt more at home before I’d even gotten there.”
In time, Leo can trade stories about Friday Night Lights with Eagles running back Miles Sanders. Nobody knows more about the plots in that series than Sanders, whose Twitter handle is @ BobbieMilesXXIV, the star running back at the beginning of the series.
Truth be told, Leo had an epiphany in 110-degree heat during a plumbing job on a bridge connecting Adelaide Oval, a massive ARF stadium, to a convention center. Leo turned to the foreman while both were crawling through a tiny passageway and said, “I’m too big to be doing this. I miss sports and I should be playing sports still.”
The foreman helped get Leo in touch with an agent who placed an Aussie punter
in an American college, and eventually the folks at Iowa State saw the potential in him.
Leo came on the past two seasons after red-shirting in 2017. Playing outside on a three-man line, he registered 33 tackles, including 11.5 for loss and three sacks.
Confident and articulate, Leo secured a 4.0 grade point average in his final year at Iowa State, earning a BA in liberal studies. The big guy earned first-team Academic All-Big 12 honors.
On the football spectrum, though Leo has a lot of ground to make up, no one is going to have to teach him how to wear football pads and a helmet, as it was early for Mailata.
Preliminarily, Leo likes the attacking style of defense that Eagles coordinator Jim Schwartz likes to play.
“I’m excited to be out there and just be around a different system. We ran a three-front continuously at Iowa State. We were an attack and react kind of school. To get out there and see the ends be true rushers as well is exciting to be a part of. I’m just pumped to get my head in that playbook and try to earn a spot.”
Leo doesn’t count against the Eagles’ roster unless he makes the team. He can spend the year on the practice squad.
He wants to make the decision difficult for Schwartz, head coach Doug Pederson and defensive line coach Matt Birk, who’s prepping his position group for virtual training.
Leo said he grew up playing Aussie Rules but never felt it was his sport. Transitioning to a plumbing career was the tipoff. Now, he feels he’s in his element. It’s not a dream, certainly nothing like what he felt seven years ago watching Super Bowl XLVII on TV.
“The San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens were playing in the Super Bowl,” Leo said. “And I remember clearly sitting there eating my lunch and watching it and thinking, ‘if only I had grown up in the U.S. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to play such an iconic sport.’ You see these incredible athletes play. It’s almost like a movie scene.”