When Matt Jones and Jason Peters were University of Arkansas football teammates more than 20 years ago, they used to play pickup basketball games in the HPER Building during the offseason to help stay in shape.
“One game we had a fastbreak and Jason pointed up to the basket,” said Jones, who played quarterback. “I didn’t throw him the [alley] oop pass. He said, ‘C’mon Matt, what’s going on?’
“I said, ‘Man, you can’t get up like that.’ ”
The 6-4 Peters weighed more than 300 pounds and had come to Arkansas as a defensive tackle.
“Jason was like, ‘You just throw the ball up there, I’ll get it,’ ” Jones said. “So it wasn’t two more times back down the court, and I threw him a lob, and it was to the top of the square on the backboard.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh, man. I threw it too far.’ But Jason just jumped up like [long-time NBA center] Hakeem Olajuwon and dunked. The whole place was shaking.
“Jason’s a freak athlete.”
Peters has used his freakish athleticism and work ethic to play 20 seasons in the NFL — all at offensive tackle since playing tight end as a rookie in 2004. His vertical jump was measured at 34 inches at the scouting combine.
At 42, Peters is the oldest active NFL player and oldest to ever play offensive tackle in the league, according to The Athletic.
“The ageless wonder,” Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith said last season when Peters joined the team.
Peters, who will be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame on Friday night in Little Rock, currently is a free agent after playing eight games for the Seahawks. He couldn’t be reached for comment for this article, but hasn’t announced that he plans to retire.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if that guy plays for another decade, to be honest with you,” Jason Kelce, the Philadelphia Eagles’ center for 13 years before retiring in March and Peters’ teammate for 10 seasons, said in December. “He’s a very, very gifted individual. He’s smart and he loves the game. I’m certainly happy that he’s still doing what he loves.”
Houston Nutt, who was Peters’ head coach at Arkansas, has stayed in touch with Peters over the years.
“Every year I say to Jason, 'This is it isn’t it?' ” Nutt said, meaning Peters finally will retire. “He’ll say, ‘I think I’ve got to go one more, Coach.’
“So it wouldn’t surprise me if he decides to play another season. It’s unbelievable he’s still playing, and at a high level.”
Peters has played in 255 NFL games — 248 in the regular season and 7 in the playoffs — with 228 starts.
“There’s no real secret to 20 seasons, just a lot of work,” Peters told The Athletic last year. “But for some reason, I always had this mindset that I was this free agent who was about to get cut.
“Even when I was one of the best in the league, that’s what I told myself every year. Might sound crazy, but that’s the truth.”
Perhaps Peters has maintained that attitude because he came into the NFL as a free agent.
Sports Illustrated projected Peters as a fourth-round pick in the 2004 draft, but he wasn’t among the 255 players chosen after being an All-SEC second-team tight end for the Razorbacks.
Peters signed with the Buffalo Bills as a free agent and received a $5,000 bonus.
“Jason Peters as an undrafted free agent is absolutely one of the steals of the century in the NFL,” Nutt said. “He should be an inspiration to all the guys who don’t get drafted.”
The Bills cut Peters in training camp, then signed him to their practice squad. He played five games as a rookie, primarily as a wedge blocker on kickoff returns.
Before the 2005 season, Peters moved to offensive tackle and became a star.
By Peters’ third season as a full-time tackle in 2007, he earned his first of three All-Pro first-team honors. He has been named to the Pro Bowl nine times.
“I coached Anthony Munoz, who was the best player ever at his position,” Jim McNally, an NFL offensive line coach for 27 years who had that position on the Bills’ staff from 2004-07, told Bleacher Report. “Jason Peters is the next best player I’ve ever coached.
“He didn’t really make a lot of errors because he was a generally instinctive football player.”
In 2019, Peters was selected to the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 2010s by the NFL and Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“He’s got great feet and quickness,” then-Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll, an Arkansas graduate assistant in 1977, said of Peters last season. “You would think as you get older, you would lose that, but he has the ability to move and change direction and redirect — stuff that guys who are young don’t have.”
Peters, who has played for the Chicago Bears and Dallas Cowboys in addition to the Bills, Eagles and Seahawks, came to Arkansas in the fall of 2000 from Queen City, Texas, as a highly recruited defensive lineman.
But after redshirting as a true freshman and not working his way into the playing rotation in fall camp in 2001, Peters was planning to transfer.
“I went to Jason’s dorm room, and I could tell he was trying to get things together like he was packing up,” said Nutt, a 2019 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee. “I said, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ Jason said, ‘Things just aren’t going good, Coach.’ I said, ‘You’re still young, you’ve got to learn some things, but it’s going to be OK.’
“Jason said, ‘I don’t think so, Coach. I think I need a change.’ ”
Nutt had a change in mind as well, just not the one Peters was contemplating.
“I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got an offensive playbook here. You’ve got to learn this playbook real quick,’ ” Nutt said he told Peters. “He said, ‘What do you mean, Coach?’
“I said, ‘You’re playing tight end, so let’s go.’ There was a little glimmer in his eyes like, ‘OK.’
“I remember his first practice on offense, we made sure to get the ball to him. We got him involved pretty quickly, and all of a sudden he was excited about it. He made a lot of plays for us.”
Some of the big plays Peters made came in Arkansas’ two seven-overtime victories at Ole Miss in 2001 and at Kentucky in 2003.
When the Razorbacks beat the Rebels 58-56, Peters caught a 2-point conversion pass from Jones that tied the game 50-50 in the sixth overtime.
In Arkansas’ 71-63 victory over the Wildcats, Peters caught a 7-yard touchdown pass from Jones in the second overtime and caught a 2-point conversion pass for the game’s final score.
“Jason was a clutch player,” said Jones, a 2022 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee. “You knew he was going to come up big when we needed it.”
Peters had 27 career catches for 288 yards and 4 touchdowns for the Razorbacks and was a devastating blocker on the right side along with All-America offensive tackle Shawn Andrews, a first-round draft pick of the Eagles in 2004. Andrews played six NFL seasons, earned All-Pro honors and was an Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee in 2018,
”You know how you do self-scouting and someone might say, ‘Coach, you’re kind of right-handed, running the ball 75% to the right side. You might want to mix it up and run to the left more,’ ” Nutt said. “Well, we had Shawn Andrews and Jason Peters on the right side, so guess what? We were going to run to the right most of the time.”
Jones said it was a comforting feeling to have Andrews and Peters blocking for him.
“Those guys were like a granite wall,” Jones said.
Jones, a first-round draft pick in 2005 by the Jacksonville Jaguars, played wide receiver as a pro for four seasons.
“I can’t believe how many NFL teams missed out on Jason when they could have drafted him,” Jones said. “He’s just so naturally gifted. I knew he was going to be a stud in the pros.
“It’s amazing he’s played for 20 years. Yes, he has God-given ability, there’s no question about that. But the longevity is so impressive, because football’s a young man’s game.
“It just shows you how hard he’s worked all these years and taken care of his body. I don’t think there’s any question he’ll be a first ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer.”