Before wearing No. 80 for Patriots, Jordan Matthews wanted to get approval from Danny Amendola

FOXBOROUGH — Jordan Matthews knew what he was getting into when he was thinking about wearing No. 80.

The wide receiver, who signed with the Patriots earlier this month, was eyeballing the chance to wear his favorite digits as a member of the New England offense. It was the first number he wore as a young football player, a partial tribute to Jerry Rice. (His Mom and Rice are first cousins.)

But first, he knew he had to make a call.

Matthews reached out to Danny Amendola, who he met a few years earlier at Sam Bradford’s wedding, to see if he was OK with it.

“I talked to Danny about it, and he said I can wear it. I have a lot of respect for his game,” Matthews said Thursday during a break from working out at Gillette Stadium.


“We were kicking it and having a great time (at the wedding). He’s just a real cool dude. He gave me a lot of good tidbits and stuff, because going into that year, it was going to be my second year with Sam. He had played a lot with Sam in St. Louis. He was just telling me some things that Sam really liked in the offense. It was good. We had a good conversation.

“I know what he did here,” Matthews added. “I don’t think you need to have a number retired to have respect for what guys do in a place like this. They call him Danny Playoff. I think he earned that nickname. I just wanted to make sure it was cool.”

In a session that ran roughly 10 minutes with reporters, the 6-foot-3, 212-pounder touched on a variety of topics, including what it’s like getting acclimated to life with the Patriots, playing with Tom Brady, some of the other guys he already knows who are on the roster, his history at Gillette Stadium, and why he prefers to be a little uncomfortable from time to time.

Matthews has been in the league for only four years, but he’s already played with a bunch of different quarterbacks.

“I always joke — I’ve had them from every nationality,” he said. “I had a black quarterback in Tyrod (Taylor). I had a Native American in Sam Bradford. I had a … let’s see … who else? I always told Carson (Wentz), ‘You’re the ginger of the group.’ It’s crazy. And then I visited the Titans, and (Marcus) Mariota is Hawaiian. It was crazy. I guess that shows you where the league is going.

“In all seriousness, it’s an honor to be able to play in an offense like this in general, run by coach (Josh) McDaniels and to have a quarterback like Tom to just learn from,” he added. “It’s something any wide receiver should be excited about.”

One of the reasons he signed with New England was the chance to be a little uncomfortable.

“I feel like in my life, my foundation — what I believe in my faith, I’m called not to be comfortable,” he explained. “I feel like it’s so easy for us as people to say ‘OK, what’s the easiest road and the path of least resistance?’ And then, we look up in our lives and we’re 80 years old and we haven’t done anything great.

“And so, I guess, in my life, I’m not looking for the easiest route to make myself great. I want to always do what is going to make it harder for me to attain any level of success, so anything I do has meaning. And then I can pour that out on my family. My wife. My future children. And the people around me.”

One of the things that he anticipates will make the acclimation a little smoother is the fact that he already knows a handful of guys on the roster.

“I knew Eric, Eric Rowe. Great, great kid. I was with him with the Eagles. Great kid. Hardworking guy. I know he was going to come here and do well,” he said. “Trey Flowers, I grew up with Trey Flowers. We actually played high school football against each other — my team always won. Deatrich Wise — both of our Dad’s actually pledged the same fraternity back at Jackson State University. And we’re both frat brothers when he played at Arkansas and I played at Vanderbilt.”

This won’t be the first time he’s played in Gillette. He caught three passes for the Eagles in a 2015 win over the Patriots. And then, there was a collegiate showdown when he was with Vandy and the Commodores squared off against UMass, a game where he vaulted over a UMass defender.

“Bro, I jumped over somebody. It was dirty. I got him. Bad,” he recalled with a laugh. “(But) we almost got beat that game.

“We played UMass early in the day, so we had all these young freshmen that we were trusting to play. All these sophomores we needed to come up big for us. And it was an early game, so we were like, ‘We’re going to win this game vs. UMass, and we’re going to be able to fly back. It’s going to be like three o’clock, because you all are eastern time. And we’re going to have a great time back at Vanderbilt.’ We almost lost. It was like halftime and we were tied up. I was like, ‘Guys, you all are tripping.’ I came out, jumped over a dude, we won. It was great.”