Jordan Poyer is All-Pro— and all sober
Poyer and his Buffalo teammates sent a cold blast New England’s way in a 47-17 wild-card playoff dismantling of the Patriots on January 15.
Life is pretty sweet these days for Jordan Poyer.
Buffalo’s veteran strong safety was named first-team All-Pro for the first time in helping lead the Bills to the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.
More important than that, the former Astoria High and Oregon State great is nearing his second year of sobriety after deciding alcohol was a negative influence on his life.
In March of 2021, Poyer went public via a lengthy message on Instagram telling followers about a drinking problem that had impacted his life in many ways.
“I quit drinking because I was an alcoholic,” he wrote. “I’m embarrassed. It’s shameful. But if I can overcome the struggle of alcohol, so can you.”
Poyer ended the message by saying, “My DMs (direct messages) are open for questions and support.”
The impetus for coming out was the February 2021 death of former NFL receiver Vincent Jackson due to chronic alcohol use. He was 38.
“Vincent was a player I grew up watching,” Poyer says by phone as he drives to his offseason home in south Florida. “I read that alcohol had something to do with negatively affecting his life. It put something in my heart to say, ‘Dang, maybe if you could have talked to him one time and let him know he’s not the only one going through it. …’
Jordan and Rachel live in south Florida during the offseason
“I decided right there, ‘You have a voice. Your voice carries weight. You have a story that people can relate to. A lot of people could use your help.’ It was the right thing for me to do.”
In November 2021, Poyer wrote a first-person article in the Players Tribune entitled “My Rock Bottom,” along with a tearful admission during an accompanying 12-minute YouTube video. That caught even more attention from readers who have reached out to him via Instagram.
“I’ve gotten thousands of messages from all over the world,” says Poyer, a nine-year NFL veteran who turns 31 in April. “I’m still getting them — people telling me their life stories. I give them my input. Just responding to some of these people has changed their lives.”
Poyer pulls his car over to read me a message he received from a fan just four hours earlier.
“Today is 100 days sober for me,” the person wrote. “I didn’t think I had it in me, but seeing your story has given me inspiration.”
“That kind of thing,” Poyer says, “continues to inspire me and motivate me. Since I came out, my life has turned around tremendously. I have a lot of community events I’m doing. I’m helping people while helping myself. It’s been awesome.”
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Poyer says he began drinking alcohol during his years at Oregon State and continued through his time in the NFL. Sometimes he’d go to the store, buy a case of beer and drink it down “in about 20 minutes.” It was getting in the way of his relationship with his wife, Rachel, and their now five-year-old daughter, Aliyah.
Jordan with daughter Aliyah (5) and wife Rachel Bush
“I couldn’t just chill,” he wrote. “When I drank, I had to drink to get F’ed up. Used alcohol to avoid all my issues in real life. … I had to be the drunkest one out there, like I was trying to prove a point.”
Poyer wrote that he hit bottom after losing to Houston in the 2019 playoffs.
“We lost in such a bad way that for the next five weeks, I drank every damn day,” he wrote. “I remember days when (Rachel) would cry because I couldn’t put a beer down. I remember not being able to play with Aliyah because I was too intoxicated. … I was losing my wife. I was losing my daughter. … I remember feeling thoughts in my head that would scare the hell out of sober me now.”
I asked Poyer if the last sentence meant he had suicidal thoughts.
“I don’t want to say that,” he told me. “It was more just bad thoughts, negative thinking — never really any positivity. I could play well and still be down about something. I was finding ways to have an excuse to drink.”
Poyer took his last drink of alcohol in March 2020. Soon after he attended his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
“Went three times and just listened,” he wrote. “I realized my issues were not even close to other people’s life issues. With those three meetings, plus the support from my family — in particular Rachel — I was able to change my life and see the light.
“I stopped drinking to be the best father I can be for her, the best husband I can be for my wife. They deserve that. ”
In our conversation, Jordan adds this of Rachel, an Instagram model with 3 million followers and a line of skincare products: “She is my biggest supporter, my biggest fan. She has seen me in my darkest days. She has stuck with me and believed in me. Now she is helping me become the best version of myself.”
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Poyer was probably the greatest all-around athlete in Astoria High history, earning 11 letters in football, basketball and baseball. In football, he quarterbacked the Fishermen to the Class 4A championship and was the state’s Offensive and Defensive Player of the year as a senior. In basketball, he was Cowapa League Player of the Year. In baseball, he was a three-time all-state player who pitched Astoria to a state title as a freshman.
“I always loved multi-sport kids,” says Mike Riley, Poyer’s coach at Oregon State from 2009-12. “To be as good as he was in three sports — there’s something special about those kind of guys, you know?
“We had Jordan in our camp two summers, and I was intrigued by his potential. I watched a lot of film on him. We went back and forth on whether to offer him. He was part of the conversation along with a bunch of other recruits. It took us a long time to pull the trigger.”
Poyer had only one FBS football scholarship offer — from Idaho. Then Riley got a letter from Jordan’s mother, Julie Poyer, whose father, Lynn Baxter, had played basketball on Oregon State’s 1963 Final Four team.
“Give my son a chance,” she wrote. “He will accomplish anything he puts his mind to.”
“That letter resonated with me,” says Riley, who offered a scholarship — but at first on the basis of grayshirt status, because the Beavers were full up on scholarships at the time. That meant Poyer would enroll at OSU late, during the following winter term. But one of the OSU recruits that year failed to qualify academically, so Poyer was invited to August training camp.
“I thought he was a developmental guy who would redshirt, but once we got a glimpse of who he was, we knew that wasn’t going to happen,” Riley says. “He played so well, he made an immediate impact. We couldn’t keep him off the field.”
Poyer was a special-teams stalwart as a freshman, the Beavers’ third cornerback and punt return specialist as a sophomore and a two-year starter after that. As a senior, he led the Pac-12 with seven interceptions and was the school’s first consensus All-American since John Didion in 1968.
“As a freshman, he was the best (punt team) gunner in the conference,” Riley recalls. “We played him at cornerback at first and then moved him to safety. He was smart, crafty and talented — one of those guys who maybe didn’t have the fastest 40 time, but had off-the-charts instincts about playing football.
“Jordan had that athletic savvy that is unique to find. You might beat him on a route, but the next time, he was all over it. He could see things faster than the average guy. He had the ability to make a play and intercept a ball. Some guys might knock the pass down — Jordan would intercept it.”
Jordan Poyer was one of the great defensive backs in Oregon State history (courtesy OSU sports communications)
Riley says Poyer could have played a number of positions for the Beavers.
“He could have been a great receiver,” Riley says. “I always regretted that I didn’t have him play as an emergency quarterback. You could do some things with him and he could make it work for you. You talk about a real football player — that’s what he was.”
Riley says Poyer had a quiet confidence about him.
“He had that sly little smile, like, ‘You guys don’t even know,’ ” says Riley with a chuckle. “Mike Hass was the same way. He was just waiting for everybody else to figure it. Jordan was easy and fun to have on a team. He loved the game, worked hard at it, and he was good.”
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At 6 foot and 185 pounds with only average speed, Poyer wasn’t a can’t-miss pro prospect. Drafted in the seventh round by Philadelphia in 2013, he made the team but was released at midseason and claimed by Cleveland. He finally broke into the Browns’ starting lineup in 2016 but suffered a lacerated kidney and missed the final 10 games of the season.
Buffalo then signed him to a four-year, $13-million free-agent contract, moved him from corner to safety, and he was on his way. Through five seasons with the Bills, he has started 86 straight games, including playoffs. Over those five seasons, Poyer has the most interceptions of any safety in the NFL (18) and is the only player to accumulate at least 500 tackles, 15 interceptions and 10 sacks.
This season, Poyer made the first All-Pro team. “That was great,” he says. “Worked hard for it.” But he wasn’t selected to play in what would have been his first Pro Bowl.
Poyer made first-team All-Pro for the first time in 2021
“Popularity contest, it seems,” Poyer says. “I’m all right with it. That’ll come at some point. All-pro is better, anyway.
“I had a solid year. I still think there are areas I can continue to get better at. I have great teammates around me and great coaches. They make it fun to go to work. Micah (Hyde, his counterpart at free safety) and I have been together so long, it’s easy to go to work. It makes it fun.”
Coming off a 2020 season in which Buffalo went 13-3 and won a pair of playoff games before falling to Kansas City in the AFC Championship Game, the Super Bowl was the goal this season. The Bills finished the regular season 11-6, with five of the losses by a total of 23 points.
“We couldn’t find a way to win those close games, but overall, we handled adversity really well,” Poyer says.
The Bills exorcised some demons by blowing out New England 47-17 in a wild-card playoff contest. Poyer, who was miked up by network TV for the game, created a stir with some pre-game exhortations to his teammates: “We got to hit them in the mouth. You see how cocky they are? … It’s the end of an era for them tonight.”
“I think I got caught up in the moment,” Poyer tells me sheepishly. “I have a lot of respect for the Patriots and what they’ve been able to accomplish. I have a lot of respect for Coach (Bill) Belichick. He’s beaten my ass every time we’ve played them except the last two times.
“Being in Buffalo for four years and getting the crap kicked out of me — I was tired of (the Patriots), tired of their fans, tired of it all. It was a defining moment in that division for us, to be able to say we’re taking over this division. ‘It’s not your division any more.’ ”
Buffalo then advanced to a rematch with Kansas City, an instant classic won by the Chiefs 42-36 in overtime.
“It was a tough way to go out,” Poyer says. “It was a shootout type of game. Wish we were on the other end of it. The last couple of plays of the game we wish we had back.
“It’s something to learn from. I’m not going to let it define me as a player. To come up short — that’s life sometimes. That’s football. You just have to find a way to do it better next time.”
Poyer’s wife wasn’t shy about ripping the NFL on Twitter for its playoff system, which awards first possession on a coin flip and creates the possibility that one team never touches the ball in the extra session.
“She can say that; I never argue those things,” Poyer says. “I’m sure they’ll look into it this offseason, and maybe they’ll change the system. But we lost the coin toss. My job is to help us go out there and make a stop. We make one stop, our offense gets the ball. Then it’s a different story.”
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On Father’s Day weekend last June, Poyer staged a fund-raising golf tournament. It was partly to honor the man who raised him with his mother — Fa’alaeo Poyer — but also to create an event to give back to the Astoria community. The theme: “It’s OK to Ask for Help.”
Jordan staged a fund-raising golf tournament for Astoria High — his alma mater — last summer
The event raised more than $30,000 for Astoria High, with one bidder paying $10,000 for an autographed Poyer jersey. Jordan then staged a “JP workout day” for the town’s youth, who got to hear him talk and see him catch passes from former Oregon QB Dennis Dixon.
“I love being around young kids,” Poyer says. “When I’m done playing, I want to be a coach. I want to encourage kids to know it’s OK to ask for help.”
Over the weekend, Poyer made a documentary entitled “The Kid From Astoria.”
“We just decided, let’s shoot some content to go with the Players Tribune piece,” he says. “It turned out really well.”
During the 2021 season, Poyer delivered his message to youth groups in the Buffalo area. He made several visits to a group called “Kids Escaping Drugs.” His manager lined up appearances at a couple of local community colleges.
“It’s been good,” he says. “A lot of people want to hear from an athlete with some sort of message like mine.”
I asked Poyer if he feels like a different person than he was before your sobriety began.
“I do,” he says. “I’m more clear. More self-aware. On the field, I feel stronger, faster, better. I’m not hung over — ever. I can get up at 6 a.m. and go about my day. In every aspect of life — relationships, stress management — I see improvement.”
Poyer has turned his life around after gaining sobriety nearly two years ago
He feels like he’s a better husband. And a better father.
“For sure,” he says, turning off his engine as he heads into the house. “It’s fun to be here and see my daughter grow up. I’m with her every day, taking her to the park.”
Indeed, life is sweet for Jordan Poyer these days.
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