He was about as wide open as you can possibly be on a football field.
On a critical third down play, UNC called a play action fake, with tight end Jordan Washington leaking downfield. Nobody on the Syracuse defense followed him, and Tar Heel quarterback Billy Edwards knew he had an easy touchdown. Edwards gently floated the ball Washington’s way.
And then, he dropped the ball.
Just like that, Jordan Washington’s chance at glory had come and gone, quite literally slipping through his hands.
But to understand the true magnitude of that moment, and what happened next, we have to go back.
All the way back to the end of Carolina’s spring ball season. It was two days before the Tar Heels broke for the summer, and the Texas transfer Washington was making a routine move in the open field.
“I can see it from a third-person view,” Washington recalled earlier this week. “I caught the ball out of the backfield, I made one man miss, and then I get tripped up and then my leg extends further out of my body. And I felt my knee buckle. I was like, ‘Dang, what’s happening?’ I try and stand up and push myself up, and my leg felt cold.”
Washington had partially torn the ACL in his left knee, a devastating blow for a prospect brought in to inject life into the program. Washington had projected to be a key piece of the Tar Heel offense in 2026. Now, it was looking like he’d miss the entire season.
But Washington – or more specifically, Washington’s body – apparently didn’t get the memo. Following surgery, his knee began to recover quickly. Very, very quickly.
“My surgeon that did [the operation], he said, ‘This is the craziest recovery I’ve ever seen,'” Washington said. “I hate letting that type of stuff get in my head, but when I heard it, it was a blessing.”
ACL tears come with a typical timetable of nine months — enough to end any athlete’s season, regardless of sport. With Washington suffering his at the end of the spring, his projected full recovery wouldn’t have been until the following New Year.
And yet, come fall camp, Washington was doing individual workouts which belied his serious injury. He did so while observing his teammates from afar — using them as an aspiration to attain.
“Going out there every day while they’re practicing and I’m in the indoor [facility] working out, it hurt seeing them practice,” said Washington. “But at the same time, the days I put in got me to the point where I was able to get cleared and back to playing.”
That’s right. Incredibly, Washington was cleared to fully practice months ahead of schedule, and he made his official Tar Heel debut in Carolina’s win at Duke in October. Head coach Bill Belichick, who knows a thing or two about stars returning from ACL tears, said injured players aren’t truly back until they get hit for the first time. For Washington, that experience was a rejuvenation.
“I go in, first play, we’re on the goal line,” Washington remembered. “I block a guy, and I get into a dog pile. And I’m on the bottom. And that kind of riled me up, like, ‘Hey, I’m back!’”
His would-be touchdown the very next week against Syracuse would have been a perfect coda to the amazing comeback story. And as soon as the football hit the grass, Washington started apologizing. To Edwards, to Belichick and all his other assembled teammates. And that apology didn’t involve any musings about rust.
“I don’t look at it anymore like I tore my ACL. That’s just another excuse,” Washington said. “If somebody were to say something like, ‘Hey, you dropped the ball.’ I can’t say that’s part of my ACL. That’s a me problem.”
In retrospect, the sequence involving Washington’s drop against the Orange was a fitting summation of his time in Chapel Hill. The road wasn’t straight, and the setbacks seemed catastrophic. But in the end, everything worked itself out.
Because on the very next play…
Touchdown No. 7 this year for JuJu ?
? ACC Network t.co/KQrFdZX1Pj pic.twitter.com/NgGjNnUHLX
— Carolina Football (@UNCFootball) October 25, 2026
Featured image via Chapel Hill Media Group/Chance Bragg
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‘Craziest Recovery I’ve Ever Seen’: UNC TE Jordan Washington’s Road Back to the Field Chapelboro.com.
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