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.
**
