Alabama defensive lineman Phidarian Mathis is hard to miss on the practice fields in Mobile this week, and not just because of his 6-foot-4, 313-pound frame. As one of the Crimson Tide’s two representatives on the American team roster for the Reese’s Senior Bowl, Mathis has built a reputation among teammates and coaches for playing with an infectious energy that pushes everyone around him to raise their game.
“It’s just my passion for the game. I love the game a lot,” Mathis said at a press conference ahead of the American team’s first practice this week. “It just brings me so much joy. I think, why play the game if you’re not going to have any fun with it? That’s something that I take from the game and I try to bring to the game every week.”
Senior Bowl Executive Director Jim Nagy said Mathis’ pregame routine and overall demeanor have not gone unnoticed, and predicted NFL scouts evaluating talent in Mobile this week will weigh that intangible leadership almost as heavily as his production on the field.
“A lot of these Alabama defensive linemen, it’s just the leadership and the juice they play with,” Nagy said. “I saw him play twice this year and to see what this guy is like in pregame, how he’s bouncing around and getting his teammates feeding off of him, he will move up in the draft. That will mean something on draft day aside from his talent.”
Nagy added that the ability to energize the rest of a defensive front is a rare and valuable trait for scouts to identify. “If he can affect other people on that D-line, that’s a certain position group if you can get a guy other people will feed off, there’s value in that,” he said. “I don’t know what Phil does in the locker room before he comes out, but he gets himself ready to play.”
Mathis backed up that leadership with production this past season. He piled up 53 total tackles, including nine sacks and 12 tackles for loss, while adding six quarterback hurries, two pass breakups, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery. His season-long body of work landed him on watch lists for the Lombardi, Nagurski and Outland Trophy awards, three of the sport’s top individual honors for offensive and defensive linemen.
Over his full career at Alabama, the Wisner, Louisiana, native compiled 129 tackles, 53 of them solo stops, to go with 17.5 tackles for loss, 10.5 sacks, three forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries and five pass breakups. It is a resume built as much on steady improvement as raw talent, and Mathis said this week in Mobile is the next step in a long process of proving himself.
“I feel like playing at Alabama, it has gotten me ready and it has prepared me for this opportunity coming up all week long,” Mathis said. “I just have to go out there and just be myself and do what I do, not stress about nothing. Just take one day at a time.”
Patience, he said, was one of the biggest lessons he took from his time in Tuscaloosa, where playing time was hard to come by behind a deep rotation of talented defensive linemen. “To get playing time I had to be patient,” he said. “Waiting on my time to come was a big part of what I had to overcome and I learned that a lot. It served me well.”
Nagy said this past season represented the best football of Mathis’ career, and it is a big reason his draft stock has climbed heading into the spring. “Watching him over the summertime, kind of like Kenny Pickett, we had him evaluated as a Day 3 pick, a good player, but man he took a really nice jump this year, he really did,” Nagy said. “In terms of interior D-linemen, he moved up about as much as anyone in the group in our opinion. He’s not just a two-down player.”
This week’s practices also put Mathis on the same American team roster as several players from Georgia, which beat Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game earlier this season. Six Bulldogs made the American roster, compared to just two from Alabama — Mathis and running back Brian Robinson Jr.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for those guys,” Mathis said of his former SEC rivals. “We came up short but I need to remind y’all we still won the SEC Championship Game. Let that be known. I’ve got a lot of respect for those guys and we’ve been around each other a lot. Actually, you get to know those guys more since we’ve been around each other.”
As Mathis looks ahead to his professional career and the NFL Draft in April, he said he will carry his college experience with him wherever his career leads. “The memories are going to be stuck in my head for a lifetime,” he said. “Let’s just say I accomplished so much at Alabama. But the memories I made at Alabama, nobody can top that. It’s always going to be with me and those guys know we’re always going to be brothers.”
The Reese’s Senior Bowl has served for decades as one of the most important stops on the pre-draft calendar, drawing NFL scouts, coaches and executives to Mobile each year to evaluate the country’s top college prospects in practice settings and an all-star game. For Mathis, this week’s showcase is one more chance to demonstrate to decision-makers that his combination of talent and leadership belongs at the next level.