CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The 2021 NFL draft was well into its second hour as Jaelan Phillips relaxed with his parents in Miami. Everyone remained confident that the outside linebacker from the University of Miami wouldn’t fall past the Minnesota Vikings at No. 14.
Then the Vikings traded that pick to the New York Jets and slid down to No. 23.
The mood changed.
“That’s where the stress really kicked in,” recalled Phillips’ father, Jon. You’re sitting there wondering if Jaelan’s going to be one of those guys [who falls].”
Stress is relative here.
Phillips, who joined the Carolina Panthers as a free agent in March, medically retired from football in 2018 after his sophomore season at UCLA because of concussions and multiple surgeries to repair a serious left wrist injury suffered when he was hit by a car while riding a moped. He worked part-time at his dad’s law firm and turned his focus to music production at Los Angeles Community College. In 2020, he returned to football and played for Miami, in part because he was attracted to their music production program.
So waiting in the 2021 NFL draft until the Dolphins selected him 19th overall wasn’t that stressful in the grand scheme of things.
“After retiring, I was happy with anything,” Phillips recalled. “Like, if I would have gone in a late round or as an undrafted free agent, I was grateful to be back in the game.”
Phillips is more than back in the game now. His contract with the Panthers is a four-year, $120 million deal with an annual average of $30 million, which ranks eighth among edge rushers. The Panthers hope he will help elevate their defense to an elite level, and his addition took pressure off general manager Dan Morgan to find an edge rusher in the draft.
But it was the world of music production that allowed Phillips to maintain an identity when he was unable to play football and remains a powerful force in 26-year-old’s life. So much so that he’s looking forward to his new son’s first piano lesson more than introducing him to sports because he knows how quickly sports can be taken away.
“Without music, I definitely would have been in a different place,” Phillips said.
The Panthers hope they can draw on Phillips’ perseverance while rebuilding a team that has had nine straight losing seasons despite making the playoffs in 2025.
“Jaelan is such an amazing story,” said Duke coach Manny Diaz, who coached Phillips at Miami. “It really looked like the end of the road for him. When you’re talking to somebody in that situation it’s, ‘What does the game mean to them? What is their passion?’
“Jaelan, he’s such a unique individual. He’s much more than a football player. … Having football taken away from him, it’s one of those things where he realized he didn’t need it, but he realized ‘I love it. It’s something I want to have back a part of my life.”’
Colorado State coach Jim Mora understands. As the head coach at UCLA in 2017, he took a helicopter, something he’d never done before and hasn’t done since, to watch Phillips play in high school when he was the top-ranked prospect in the country. Mora remembers vividly Phillips playing offense, defense and special teams, revealing “this incredible thirst to compete.”
He talked to Phillips often after the accident as the 6-foot-5 Phillips dropped from around 250 pounds down to 210. He saw how music offered Phillips an outlet while he was “figuring out his football path” and marvels at seeing the now 266-pound Phillips making plays like he imagined he would in 2017.
“I’m just really grateful he found his way back to the field, because his impact on people can be so profound,” Mora said. “It’s given him a platform, and he’s just taking advantage of it.”
That music became a bridge for Phillips shouldn’t come as a surprise. His mother, Sabine Robertson-Phillips, is a cellist. His father once played the trumpet in an orchestra. His grandfather, Jon Robertson, was a Juilliard School-trained pianist and symphony conductor.
His dad also was a basketball player at La Sierra University, a small college in Riverside, California, before transferring to UCLA to focus on music and law. So he has a unique perspective on sports and life that helped his son through the hard times.
“He always was like, ‘Man, I really think that you can get back into football and still do something special,”’ Jaelan recalled. “At first I didn’t believe him. We butted heads. We went back and forth.
“But I ultimately took his guidance on that. It was a very special moment for both him and me when I signed this contract [with Carolina] and we were able to look back and reminisce on 2018 when I was arguing with him every day, [when I was saying], ‘I don’t want to do this. It’s not for me.”’
Phillips can play the guitar and has written a few songs, but his real passion is in production. He began after the accident, recording himself with a $50 USB microphone in the bathroom at his apartment in Los Angeles, which he laughs at now because it produced a “pretty s—ty product.”
That ultimately led him to a studio.
“I’m the one behind the desk on the computer,” said Phillips, who plans to turn one of the rooms at his new house in Charlotte into a studio. “I record the artist, track his or her vocals, then I mix them … polishing it up and turning it into what you hear.”
Those times made draft night in 2021 “surreal” as he recalled everything he’d been through.
“When I retired from football, I didn’t think I was going back to it,” he said. “So I had to start planning for the future and figuring out what I was going to do.”
That perspective has helped Phillips deal with injuries in the NFL. He had a season-ending torn Achilles in 2023 and a torn ACL on his right knee in 2024 that required reconstructive surgery. The perseverance that Phillips says best describes his journey was magnified when he signed with Carolina.
“If you had told me this was going to happen a handful of years ago, I might have told you you’re crazy,” Phillips said. “I’ve always had the belief in myself. I’ve always known what I can accomplish.
“But you know, truthfully, with this game you never know.”
The main knock on Phillips is that his sack production hasn’t matched his disruption as a pass rusher. While Phillips ranked 12th with 73 quarterback pressures in 2025 in his time with the Dolphins and Philadelphia Eagles, he had only five sacks.
His goal this year is to turn “disruption into production.”
But if the sacks don’t come, there’ll be no panic because of the perspective music has given him in life.
“I know it sounds so freaking corny, but it’s almost like he was aware of his destiny and what he could add not only to a football program, but really to people in his orbit,” Mora said. “He cares about people, and even when there were dark days he never lost track of that.”