Cam Jordan’s 2025 resurgence already turned heads. Now the bigger question is whether he can back it up, and Saints defensive coordinator Brandon Staley just poured gasoline on that conversation.
Jordan has been dealing with a hamstring injury that could hold him out at the start of the season, but Staley’s description of what he saw before the injury was hard to miss.
"I was very impressed how he practiced before the hamstring. That was the best I'd seen him practice, quite honestly, since I've been with him, which is saying a lot. But it was the best that he had looked."
That kind of praise naturally raises the ceiling on what Jordan might still have left. If that version of him is the one the Saints get when he returns, New Orleans could be looking at another season with two players clearing 10 sacks.
Jordan’s 2025 campaign already proved there’s more in the tank. After two straight disappointing seasons, he roared back with a team-high 10.5 sacks and nearly doubled the sack total from those previous two years combined in a single season. Another double-digit year would only strengthen the case that last season was no one-off.
The Hall of Fame conversation is where this really starts to get interesting. Jordan already has a strong résumé, but the Hall is never simple, and one more season like 2025 could push him closer to the finish line. If Staley’s assessment matches what Jordan shows on the field, it becomes much harder to imagine him being left out.
The numbers on the all-time sack list also give this season some real weight. Jordan could realistically climb as high as sixth or seventh overall in NFL history.
Fifth place is 18.5 sacks away, which is a steep climb, but sixth is within reach. Michael Strahan sits in sixth with 141.5 sacks, 9.5 ahead of Jordan, and that gap at least puts the conversation into attainable territory after last year’s production.
At minimum, Jordan needs 6.5 sacks to move into the top 10 all time. That matters because every player currently in that group is already in the Hall of Fame, with Terrell Suggs and Von Miller as the exceptions.
Miller is still active, which makes him a different case, and the current gap means passing him would be a long shot. Seventh place, then, looks like the most realistic ceiling.
Even so, the path is clear: if Jordan comes back and strings together another double-digit sack season, he’ll leave the game among the legends. Staley’s comments only make that possibility feel a little more real.
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