NEW ORLEANS -- Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan still has unfinished business.
That was his motto when he signed a restructured contract last March to stay in New Orleans for a 15th season. Jordan, 36, gambled on himself, reworking a deal that once guaranteed him $12.5 million in 2025 to one worth a maximum of $6 million if he hits all his incentives.
The gamble has paid off.
Jordan said he has felt like a new man since the second half of the 2024 season. He said he was so frustrated last year that he didn't even want to get on the plane home with the team after a Week 9 loss to the Carolina Panthers if things didn't change.
Frustrated both by his lack of snaps and tired of playing for defensive line coach Todd Grantham, who he described as the "worst D-line coach of his life," Jordan said he felt like he was being phased out of a game he wasn't ready to leave behind.
"I was reenergized [starting] last year. Yeah I was. I didn't think so. I was like, 'They're trying to put me out to pasture,'" Jordan said. "I got enraged and once you get enraged, you realize it comes from a place of passion. I was like, 'No, I've got too much love for this game.'"
Things changed after that Week 9 game. Saints coach Dennis Allen was fired the next morning and Grantham moved to a different role. Grantham then left for a job to become Oklahoma State's defensive coordinator the next month.
"Once the position coach left, it's like the light opened up," Jordan said last week. "It was like, 'Hey Cam, we'll give you a chance.' That's all I've ever asked."
Jordan, who is in the last year of his reworked deal, is making the most of those opportunities this season. He's the team's oldest defensive lineman by several years, and he joked he and linebacker Demario Davis, who turns 37 in January, are "grizzled."
"We've been to 1,000 battles," Jordan said.
Jordan is technically competing with Chase Young, 26, and Carl Granderson, 28, for snaps, but has often given both of them high praise and said he is happiest with the three of them in a rotation.
The 2011 first-round pick out of California is playing under a new defensive coordinator and new scheme in Year 15 and is taking every opportunity he can get, making his mark in NFL history. With a strip sack against the Atlanta Falcons last week, Jordan passed Dwight Freeney on the NFL's official sack list, something he noted was special because he grew up watching the Pro Football and College Football Hall of Famer.
CAM JORDAN SACK 💪
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) November 30, 2025
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/JXVbbhVKm4
Saints defensive coordinator Brandon Staley has said that Jordan's ability to adapt has helped make him successful.
"It's just a testament to him that he can do anything," Staley said. "What he is doing now is he's really, I think, in a comfort zone within the scheme. And then now you're seeing the playmaking, that rush with the strip sack, that's textbook Cam Jordan. But I also thought there were a lot of little things in there in the run game where it was also textbook Cam Jordan in a different scheme, but doing it the same way that he's always done."
With Jordan's two sacks against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday, he moved to 6.5 for the season -- his most since 2022 -- and the team leader with five games left. Jordan also leads the team with nine pressures and is third in pressure percentage behind Young, who leads the league with 19% of his pass rush snaps ending in a pressure.
Those two sacks moved Jordan into a tie for 17th place on the all-time list with, coincidentally, Saints legend Rickey Jackson, a Hall of Fame linebacker who had 128 sacks since the stat became officially tracked in 1982.
The sacks also proved financially lucrative for the veteran. If the season ended today, Jordan would have unlocked $1.5 million of those incentives for sacks (6.5 so far) and playtime (55% of defensive snaps this season). Jordan earned a $600,000 incentive when he had two sacks in the first quarter versus the Dolphins.
When asked postgame about hitting those marks, Jordan said that has never been his goal. Jordan, who became the Saints all-time sack leader in 2023, said he wants to continue to push the envelope.
"My goal is to win. Sitting at 2-10 and the team has always incentivized some part of my contract. I've never once played for those incentives," Jordan said.
Incentives or not, winning or not, Jordan is going to play the game he loves, just like he said last week.
"Give me a chance. Let's see what I do with it."