Georgia Tech Professional Athletes

Jordan Mason's Season Hits an Early Wall

Jordan Mason looked every bit the part of a legitimate NFL starter in Week 1. The Georgia Tech product carried the ball 15 times for 59 yards and punched in a touchdown as Minnesota knocked off Green Bay 39–22. Then came the news that erased all of it.

The Vikings placed Mason on injured reserve Wednesday with a fractured thumb — a move that, per The Sporting News, was not widely anticipated based on initial injury reporting. He'll miss at least four games, a brutal development for a player who had just established himself as the clear lead back in Minnesota's offense.

Mason had entered the season sharing backfield duties with veteran Aaron Jones, and his Week 1 performance suggested the job was trending in his direction. Now the Vikings must patch together a backfield without him, having signed DeeJay Dallas to the 53-man roster to help absorb the lost carries. The club had evaluated Mason's thumb soreness as early as Sunday, when head coach Kevin O'Connell acknowledged the injury postgame, but the severity didn't become clear until later in the week.

For Mason, the timing is particularly deflating. After years developing his NFL case at Georgia Tech and grinding through a depth-chart climb, he'd finally seized a featured role — only to see it interrupted before the second week of the season.

A Rough Debut for Jordan van den Berg

Mason wasn't the only Yellow Jacket drawing attention for the wrong reasons this week. Bears defensive lineman Jordan van den Berg made his NFL debut in Week 1, but Chicago's coaching staff wasn't entirely satisfied with what it saw. Bears defensive line coach Jeremy Garrett publicly highlighted two specific issues with van den Berg's performance, a candid assessment that underscores the gap between college production and professional execution. The Bears fell to Carolina 37–59 in that game, so there was plenty of blame to go around, but the critique signals van den Berg will need a sharper showing as the season progresses.

Elsewhere Around the League

Not every Georgia Tech alum had a rough week. Harrison Butker continued his reliable ways as the Chiefs cruised past Denver 31–10 on Monday night. Butker didn't need to be heroic with Kansas City's offense handling business, but his presence as one of the league's premier kickers remains a quiet constant for a team with championship ambitions.

Darren Waller caught two passes for 28 yards in Carolina's 37–59 loss to Chicago in his debut with the Panthers. It was a modest showing in a lopsided game, but Waller's fit in the Panthers' offense — alongside quarterback Bryce Young and a retooled receiving corps — is worth tracking as Carolina works to find its identity.

Zeek Biggers suited up for Miami in a 13–27 loss to Las Vegas, though the Dolphins' defensive interior didn't generate much resistance against the Raiders' ground attack.

The headline remains Mason's injury. A four-game minimum absence for a player who just proved he belonged as a starter is the kind of setback that can define — or derail — a season. Georgia Tech fans will be watching his recovery closely.

Seven months after being shot in the ankle at a San Francisco bar, Georgia Tech alumnus Keion White is cleared, healthy, and — somehow — the most entertaining player in the 49ers' locker room heading into the 2026 season opener.

White was shot on February 9 at a San Francisco bar and nightclub, reportedly after an altercation broke out when Lil Baby's entourage attempted to enter White's private party. The 49ers defensive end underwent surgery on his ankle the same day and began what he described as a recovery unlike anything he'd experienced from a traditional football injury.

The Road Back

Speaking ahead of the season, White acknowledged that bouncing back from a gunshot wound was a different challenge than recovering from the kind of injuries NFL players typically face. The mental and physical dimensions of the rehab were unfamiliar territory — but by the time camp closed out the first week of September, White had cleared every hurdle. Per Pro Football Talk, the verdict is straightforward: he's good to go.

What makes the story even more remarkable is White's demeanor through it all. Rather than going dark or guarded, the Georgia Tech product leaned into his natural personality and became something of a viral fixture during the run-up to the opener.

Quote Machine

Ahead of San Francisco's season-opening trip to Australia to face the Los Angeles Rams, White delivered a clip that spread quickly across NFL social media — a deadpan meditation on melatonin dosage and jet lag management that had his teammates and reporters alike laughing. Yahoo Sports dubbed him a "quote machine" in its September 5 daily roundup, and the label fits.

When asked directly about being shot during the offseason, White's response was equally disarming. Yahoo Sports noted the quote as "jaw-dropping" — the kind of self-aware, unflinching commentary that typically takes veteran players years to develop. White delivered it like he'd been doing postgame pressers his whole life.

The 49ers, for their part, have now had two players shot within the span of two years — a grim organizational footnote that White himself acknowledged with characteristic bluntness.

The Bigger Picture

For Georgia Tech fans, White's return is a meaningful one. The Yellow Jackets have a pair of alumni on the 49ers roster — White at defensive end and Pressley Harvin III at punter — and both are active contributors heading into the new season. San Francisco's opener in Australia gives the program's NFL contingent an international stage right out of the gate.

White's resilience is the story, but his personality may be what carries him through a long season. The 49ers needed their defensive line healthy — and they got White back. Everything else, apparently, is just material.

Harrison Butker didn't need a regular-season stage to remind everyone he's one of the most dangerous legs in professional football.

The Georgia Tech alum and Kansas City Chiefs kicker drilled a 69-yard field goal on the final play of the first half during a Week 2 preseason game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — a kick that would have shattered the NFL's official regular-season record had it come in a game that counts. It didn't, and Butker knows it. But the football world noticed anyway.

The current official NFL record for longest field goal in a regular-season game stands at 66 yards. Butker cleared that by three yards — and came just one yard shy of tying Jaguars kicker Cam Little's 70-yard preseason bomb from a year prior, which itself sits outside the record books for the same reason. Bragging rights and bar-argument fodder are the spoils here, not a place in the record books.

The moment wasn't entirely gilded for Butker. Later in that same Buccaneers game, he missed a point-after attempt, and Kansas City dropped the contest by a single point — a result that will sting precisely because of how close the margin was and how routine PATs are supposed to be. The long ball giveth; the short kick taketh away.

Butker also appeared in an earlier preseason matchup against Seattle, connecting on three field goals as the Chiefs and Seahawks played to a 9-9 tie. Consistency from distance, as always, is his calling card — the near-record kick was a flourish, not an anomaly.

The Context

For Georgia Tech fans, Butker remains the program's most prominent NFL name — a homegrown Atlanta product who walked out of The Flats and straight into a dynasty. The 69-yarder is the kind of moment that travels: it generated national coverage across CBS Sports, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports, and Yahoo Sports within hours of the snap. Whether or not the NFL counts it, Butker's leg has now been discussed in the same breath as the longest kicks in professional football history.

No other Yellow Jacket alumni generated notable headlines during the August 23–29 window, though Georgia Tech continues to have one of the deeper NFL alumni rosters in the ACC, with players spread across more than a dozen teams — from Jahmyr Gibbs in Detroit to Darren Waller in Carolina.

This week belonged to Butker, unambiguously. And if preseason kicks don't count, someone should tell the internet.