This feature is free content, but future longform pieces will only be available to premium subscribers. Still looking to join? From now until Sept. 9th you can lock in a year-long Gamecock Scoop subscription for just $22. That's less than $2 a month. Just use promo code: GOCOCKS22 at checkout.

--- ---

Jordan Strachan carries a certain quiet, unmistakable confidence.

Not quiet in the sense he never talks — anyone involved with South Carolina’s football program will tell you the sixth-year defensive end has emerged as a team leader on and off the field. Not unmistakable in a way where his path has always been steady, either. Strachan was a walk-on at Georgia State coming out of Camden County High School in Kingsland, Georgia and lost nearly an entire season to injury in 2019 before transferring to Columbia in 2021.

But he never questioned it, even when others in college football did. Now heading into South Carolina’s season opener against his old program, he is ready for the rest of the world to see it.

“I was a freaking walk-on, bro,” Strachan told GamecockScoop. “I went to Georgia State and did what I did, now I’m here in the SEC starting, a draft prospect; it doesn’t make sense, but I’ve never seen anything else ever happening.”

It all goes back to enthusiasm for football bordering on an obsession from a young age. When he suffered his first youth football concussion, he begged his coaches to let him stay in the game. After one particularly intense game where he “sweated everything out of him,” as his father Sean remembered, he had to go to the emergency room to receive an IV.

When his parents took him to Camden County High School football games as a kid, he would sit on the bleachers and intently watch every snap instead of throwing a football with his friends on a grass area adjacent to the stands.

The program he dreamed of playing for won back-to-back state championships when he was in elementary school. But on the rare Friday nights where it suffered a loss, he would cry on the way home. He traded his powder blue and white for orange and blue on Saturdays, growing up a Florida Gators fan just over two hours outside Gainesville right on the Georgia/Florida border.

Playing, watching, imagining. All football, all the time.

“Jordan has always seen himself in the NFL,” Sean told GamecockScoop. “I’ll just say it; he always has. Even when I didn’t see that or couldn’t see that, or we [his family] didn’t have any of those aspirations, he certainly did. Our thing was, ‘hey, go out there, do your best, play football,’ but for him, it has always been more than what we thought.”

Those NFL aspirations hit a snag in high school when he was a late bloomer physically. His mental peripherals checked out long before ever playing a down on Friday nights, but physically coaches did not always know where to play him. He cycled through various positions on both sides of the ball, even playing quarterback at one point.

He was a square peg in a sport geared for precise round holes, which created challenges for his youth coaches and collegiate prospects. He was under 200 pounds throughout his high school career, weighing in at 195 according to former Camden County head coach Welton Coffey.

“When you have a guy with that kind of length, you can’t teach length, and you can’t teach instinct,” Coffey told GamecockScoop. “And what he did was he had fairly good feet for a kid that size. Now, there’s no question as far as I thought he would grow into his body and eventually move closer to the ball.”

Still, college coaches told him he was not big enough. They told him he was not physical enough to play at the next level. In the case of one SEC program, they invited him to campus for an official visit and never followed up with him after seeing his size in person.

“I knew right then what we were getting into,” Sean said. “Some of the other folks who were showing interest kind of passed, and it was crushing for him. He always saw himself playing at the highest level, and it was kind of devastating for him. But the thing I love about him is if you tell him he can’t do something, that is probably the worst thing in the world to tell him, because it is going to be his motivation.”

The grueling recruiting process can take a toll on even the most confident kids. Luckily for Strachan, his support system was a constant, sturdy presence. His father works as a school counselor, and his mother, Shuntay, is a social worker. When Jordan was in middle school, both of his parents worked at his school in their respective roles. Everywhere he went, he had two people acutely trained to help young people navigate their mental struggles.

Sean immigrated to the United States from the Bahamas in 1993. He learned the rules and intricacies of football along with Jordan as he progressed on his journey.

Unlike a lot of parents who double as coaches for their kids, Sean could not teach his son about proper defensive techniques or help him study film. Instead, Jordan’s parents used their areas of expertise to coach him through football between his ears, something he desperately needed during his lowest moments on the recruiting trail.

“I think emotionally she can really connect with me and try to kind of compartmentalize my emotions, or what I may be feeling or how I respond to those emotions,” Strachan said about his mother. “My dad, he’s a real brainiac, cerebral guy. He has a photographic memory, so he is able to feed me with information. I may get information from my dad, but it’s different applying certain emotions. So having that balance, just two great parents, I’ve been blessed.”

Before his physical talents fully kicked in, his mentality first earned him his opportunities. The leadership qualities everyone raves about came from his background as the oldest of four children. His three siblings, aged 19, 18, and 14, look up to him at home the same way younger players do in football.

“I just heard it from my dad all the time,” Jordan said about being a leader. “He used to kill that word. Like, he said that word probably 100 times a day. Just being a leader for your siblings, setting an example for them.”

His experience as a walk-on is invaluable on a roster where head coach Shane Beamer has stressed his desire to have as many walk-ons on the squad as the NCAA will allow. Perhaps it is not a coincidence the most recent walk-on Beamer extended a scholarship to -- Payton Mangrum -- set up just two lockers down from Strachan during camp.

His background in playing multiple positions helps him view football differently than most players. He knows what the sport looks like from the vantage point of a safety or a cornerback, enabling him to have more in-depth conversations with his teammates from other parts of the roster.

He can guide players through injury setbacks, something he knows all too well about after suffering a season-ending injury in Georgia State’s 2019 season opener. The unfamiliarity of settling into a new program is nothing new for Strachan after his move from Atlanta to Columbia.

Any situation, any roadblock, any unique challenge, Strachan has probably lived it and can infuse his teammates with the perspective and support of someone who grew up with two parents doing the same daily.

“No matter what, people gravitated to him,” Coffey said. “He had the natural skillset or intangibles for leadership. And so what is so fun to watch is when young people get to a certain level of maturity, they can harness that and make other people better.”

Now everything is coming full circle for Strachan. On Saturday he will suit against the program he still holds the all-time sacks record in after piling up 10.5 for the Panthers in 2020. The head coach who gave him his first opportunity back in 2017 will be on the other sideline, as well as numerous players he still considers friends. Later this season, he will get a chance to play where his childhood heroes did when South Carolina travels to Gainesville to take on Florida.

“This guy took the hard road,” Coffey said. “He walked on, earned his keep, earned a spot and some things have happened for him. Those are the stories that need to be told.”

Somehow, someway, everything came together.

Although for Strachan himself, it was never really a surprise.