Inside the Chart | Going Deep: Jordan Yates knows he wouldn’t be the quarterback he is today without the inspiration and guidance of a Tar Heel – his uncle, former UNC QB T.J. Yates. Even a heated rivalry won’t take away the strength of their bond.
By Andy Demetra (The Voice of the Yellow Jackets)
He knows it may create some awkward optics this week, but Jordan Yates doesn’t mind. Family pride takes precedence over any Internet eye rolls.
The photo still puts a smile on the redshirt freshman quarterback’s face. Maybe even more so this week. Why feel sheepish about it?
So yes, that is a picture of Yates, 7 or 8 years old, smiling demurely and wearing a North Carolina basketball jersey.
“I definitely grew up with a lot of that in my house,” he said.
Why wouldn’t he? The picture was taken on one of the many trips Yates made with his family to Chapel Hill, N.C., during his grade-school years. He was posing during an autograph signing next to his uncle, former North Carolina quarterback T.J. Yates, a four-year starter for the Tar Heels from 2007 to 2010. Yates set 37 school records at UNC before embarking on a seven-year career in the NFL.
“I definitely have a ton of memories going up there,” said Yates, a native of Alpharetta, Ga.
Family and school ties will intersect this Saturday when Yates and Georgia Tech take on No. 21 North Carolina in the inaugural “Mayhem at Mercedes-Benz” game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium (7:30 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network from Legends Sports). Work ties will thread through the matchup as well: T.J. Yates is in his first season as the pass-game specialist for the Atlanta Falcons, who play their home games at Mercedes-Benz.
“It’s surreal how it all kind of unfolded,” T.J. said this week from his office at the Falcons’ practice facility in Flowery Branch. His older brother, Evan, is Jordan’s dad.
Instead of Carolina blue, Jordan will suit up Saturday in Georgia Tech white and gold, wearing the same No. 13 his uncle made a mainstay at UNC. Rivalry games have a way of inflaming passions, of bringing out the claws of its fan bases. They don’t always take kindly to doting words about their opponent. “House divided” families may choose their words carefully or sand down the edges of their flattery, lest anyone get the wrong idea.
Not Jordan or T.J. Neither feels the need to tiptoe around their close bonds this week. If anything, the game allows them to magnify their relationship even more.
Said T.J: “I’ve obviously been part of his path his entire career, all the way through middle school and high school, and now college and stuff. Just to see how far he’s come and where he’s at now, it’s unbelievable.”
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There’s another photo T.J. likes to share.
He was in seventh grade when Jordan was born in August of 2000. He vividly remembers the day his new nephew came home from the hospital.
“There’s a picture of me holding Jordan as I came straight from football practice. I’m literally in my football pants holding Jordan as a baby,” T.J. said.
He laughed. “I don’t know how my family let me come home and hold a newborn while still in my football pants,” he said.
If T.J., Jordan and football weren’t intertwined from the cradle, they came close. Evan, five years T.J.’s senior, was still living with his parents at the time. For a while in his early teenage years, T.J. and Jordan lived under the same roof.
“I make jokes with him all the time: ‘Listen dude, I’ve changed your diapers before. Don’t you talk crap to me,’” T.J. cracked.
“I don’t even look at him as my nephew. He’s been my little brother even since he was born. That’s how I think of him,” he added.
As Jordan started growing, T.J. became something of a late bloomer in football. He quit the sport as a sophomore at Pope High School in Marietta, Ga., opting instead to focus on basketball, where he played at the national AAU level. A new head coach convinced the 6-4, 220-pounder to give football one last shot as a senior.
A few games into the season, Yates emerged as one of the top quarterbacks in the area. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, North Carolina offered him a scholarship after watching him throw for 300 yards and five touchdowns in a double-overtime loss.
After redshirting his first year, Yates earned the starting job before the Tar Heels’ season opener in 2007. He finished the year throwing for a UNC single-season record 2,665 yards and 14 touchdowns. Yates wouldn’t relinquish the starting job again.
That gave ample opportunity for young Jordan to watch his uncle play. From first to fourth grade, he estimates he watched half of T.J.’s games in person, joining his family on caravans around the ACC. He often attended games wearing a replica North Carolina jersey with his uncle’s No. 13 on it (he owned both a blue and a white one).
Actually, Jordan’s connection to the Tar Heels predates even T.J.’s arrival. He’s pretty certain his Dad told him he named him after Michael Jordan.
“That was his favorite player. I’m like 99 percent sure,” he said.
Jordan remembers those road trips fondly. “I’d be in my Grandma’s car. I just know I’d be watching some type of movie that was on the back of the headrest, whether it was Shrek or something like that,” he said. He recalls one trip where T.J. took him through the players’ lounge and introduced him to his UNC teammates. He was at the Georgia Dome in 2010 when T.J. nearly led an undermanned UNC squad to a dramatic, come-from-behind victory over LSU in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Classic.
And yes, Jordan remembers attending a game against Georgia Tech: September 18, 2010 at Kenan Stadium. Yates passed for 209 yards and scored both a passing and rushing touchdown against the Yellow Jackets, but the Tar Heels lost to his future school 30-24.
Those games gave Jordan his first exposure to the glory and pitfalls of being QB1.
“It was cool, but it kind of helped me get an understanding. He didn’t always play well, obviously, so I would hear everything. After a loss, somebody may see you with a [number] 13 jersey on and say something to you if it was a bad game,” he said.
Yates finished his career throwing for 9,377 yards, still the most in UNC history. By the time he was drafted in the fifth round by the Houston Texans in 2011, Jordan’s own football ambitions began to take off. When he joined the Milton Junior Eagles as a sixth-grader, he was certain of two things: he wanted to play quarterback, and he wanted to wear number 13.
It soon became clear the Yateses had another budding quarterback on their hands, one whose talent would appear well before his senior year of high school.
“I knew he was a way better athlete than I ever was,” said T.J., who recalls his nephew rushing for six touchdowns in a middle school game.
As T.J. wound down his NFL career, which also included stints with the Falcons (2014), Miami Dolphins (2016), Buffalo Bills (2017), and two more stops with the Texans (2015 and 2017), Jordan was establishing himself as a rising dual-threat star at Milton High School in Milton, Ga. The 5’11,” 186-pounder attended Georgia Tech and North Carolina camps on consecutive weekends in the summer before his junior year. He committed to the Yellow Jackets on June 22, 2018, a month before the start of his senior season.
By that time T.J. had retired and moved back to Atlanta, taking essentially a gap year before starting his coaching career. Jordan decided to enlist his services early.
“That was really a perfect situation. He was off, and I was looking for a big year my senior year,” he said.
Uncle and nephew met up several times a week, either in person or on FaceTime, to review practice video or break down film of Jordan’s upcoming opponent. Every Thursday T.J. would swing by Milton during Jordan’s lunch period to catch balls for him.
“We would throw the routes that I was going to be throwing the next game,” Jordan explained.
“I had never been around him as much as I was that year. Just being around him every day, I saw him work. I saw how he understood football. I watched him take what we worked on and what he worked on in practice to the game film. I was like, ‘Okay, this dude, he’s a legit football player,’” added T.J.
The partnership led to a storybook season for Yates, who guided Milton to an upset over nationally-ranked Colquitt County at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to capture the school’s first football state title in its 69-year history. Yates earned Class 7A Offensive Player of the Year honors, the state’s largest division.
All of those wins, he insists, wouldn’t have happened without what he learned from his uncle that fall – lessons that continue to resonate with him.
“He taught me how to watch film on your own and what to look for, and figuring out the process. I still kind of stick with that process to this day,” Yates says.
Yates’ playing time was sporadic his first two seasons at Tech, but his commitment to that process paid off this month, leading to an inverse scene from 14 years ago.
This time, it was the admiring uncle on hand to watch his nephew play.
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The Yates family (L to R: John, Carol, Evan, Ashley, Jordan, T.J. and Amy)
Now to the third photo, which was snapped outside Bobby Dodd Stadium on the first Saturday of September.
Georgia Tech opened its season against Northern Illinois. T.J. was enjoying his last weekend off before the Falcons’ season started. He and his wife, Amy, decided to attend the Yellow Jackets’ game, though they didn’t exactly approach the 7:30 p.m. kickoff with urgency.
“I got there late because we had to put the kids to bed. I knew he wasn’t starting, so I planned to get there a little later,” T.J. recalled.
He and his wife arrived at Bobby Dodd Stadium right as the second quarter was starting. A few minutes later, his brother buzzed him with a text.
“He’s like, ‘Where are you? He’s going in. Get here now!’” T.J. said.
With nine minutes remaining in the second quarter, Tech quarterback Jeff Sims suffered an injury while diving after a fumble. Yates sprang into action, firing warmup passes on the sideline to fellow quarterback Trad Beatty. His aunt and uncle also went into hurry-up mode, rushing through Bobby Dodd Stadium to find their seats.
“I literally sat down in my seat as the team walked out onto the field,” T.J. said. He watched as Jordan completed 12-of-18 passes for 135 yards and threw his first career touchdown pass late in the second quarter. He also ran for a touchdown to put Tech ahead in the fourth quarter.
Afterwards the Yateses – Jordan, his Dad, his stepmom Ashley, T.J. and Amy, his grandparents John and Carol – met in Callaway Plaza to commemorate the night with a group photo.
“He’s put in so much work to become the player that he is. On top of being a really good athlete, he has morphed himself into a bona fide quarterback. Coming from my background, that makes me more proud than anything,” T.J. said.
He’s turned into a rapt viewer ever since. He watched every snap of Georgia Tech’s 45-17 rout of Kennesaw State; Yates, making his first-career start, became the first Tech quarterback since 2014 to throw four touchdown passes in a game. The Falcons’ flight to Tampa Bay initially prevented T.J. from watching Georgia Tech’s game against Clemson last weekend.
Some timely lightning strikes changed that.
“I was actually happy that it got delayed because I got to see basically the whole third and fourth quarter,” he said. Yates completed 20 passes for 203 yards and nearly led Tech to a stunning upset over the sixth-ranked Tigers. T.J. completed 16 passes for 164 yards in his lone start against the Tigers in 2010.
Yates has shown plenty of moxie over the last two-and-a-half games, but with Georgia Tech’s “Above The Line” philosophy, he knows it doesn’t promise him anything. He, Sims and Beatty continue to trade practice reps ahead of Georgia Tech’s showdown this week with the 2-1 Tar Heels. But no matter how much playing time he receives against North Carolina, Yates says it won’t diminish how special the game will be for him.
“Playing against UNC, it’s always cool for my family just because I grew up cheering for them,” he said.
So as he gears up for game day, no, Yates doesn’t feel awkward about those old photos of him in Tar Heel blue. How could he have known back then that fate would steer him to this moment?
Besides, his uncle is already set to return the favor.
“Obviously I’m a die-hard Tar Heel born, Tar Heel bred,” T.J. said.
“But I’m sorry. Not this week. I’m with Jordan all the way.”
