Jackson DE Matt Howard Has Division I Potential, But He’s Chasing a Different Dream
Jackson Township senior defensive end Matt Howard may be the only high school football player in America with a Hudl profile explicitly telling college coaches not to recruit him.
This Jaguar is a different kind of cat.
He’s a talented 6-foot-4, 230-pound pass rusher and Division I-caliber long snapper who has no interest in playing college football. He’s a devoutly religious Orthodox Christian who dreams of caving in opponents’ faces in the octagon. He’s a quiet kid who also has enough one-liners and charisma to cut a promo for a UFC fight, which he hopes to do for real in a few years.
“He’s a little bit of a different kind of kid, but he is a great kid we are lucky to have,” Jackson head coach Vin Mistretta said. “I think he’s a Division I talent, but he has no interest in college football.”
Howard sees his future as a professional mixed-martial arts fighter, but for now he limits his combat to the trenches in a high school football game. His avatar on his Hudl page is that of UFC legend Jon Jones, instead of a picture of Howard. His bio below the picture says, “I do MMA stop looking at my account,” and his page has zero video highlights on it.
Matt Howard’s Hudl profile
“Going to the next level of football, I have to not be myself,” he said. “I have to suck up to some recruiter, I have to post film and do all this stuff. In MMA, I feel free. I am my own business. I’m my own brand. I just have to be a dawg.”
A Gridiron Standout
Howard is a three-year varsity player for the Jaguars who is tied for third on the team with 38 tackles this season and leads Jackson with four sacks. He had two hits for a loss last week in the Jaguars’ 21-3 loss to Middletown South that dropped them to 2-4.
“Teams are all running to the other side or sending double teams, but he still finds a way to affect the game,” Mistretta said.
The pull of mixed-martial arts training was so strong that Howard initially elected not to play football last season. It’s not like he was training for wrestling season, either, as he has never wrestled for the Jaguars.
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“I announced I was quitting football, and my teammates were blowing up my phone nonstop,” he said. “They were so surprised because they never saw my interest in MMA because I had never really told anybody about it.”
However, Jackson Memorial’s long snapper got hurt against Long Branch in the team’s second game of 2024, turning special teams into a bit of an adventure and Mistretta into a salesman.
“I go, ‘Matt, we need you. If you do nothing else, you have to snap,’” Mistretta said. “Our Point Boro game (last year) he came back, and he’s been all the way in since then. He is one of the dominant defensive linemen in the Shore, and he is always going hard in practice.”
Playing with his friends and younger brother, Jackson junior fullback/linebacker David Howard, brought joy on the football field. He ended up finishing with 54 tackles and nine sacks, including three sacks in a state playoff win over Central, despite not even being on the team until the fourth game of the season.
The Howard brothers are now part of a Jackson team that features the combined rosters from Jackson Memorial and Jackson Liberty after the two high schools were consolidated into one ahead of this season.
Howard doesn’t do any MMA training in the fall in order to focus on football. Before he can start thinking about the future, he is working to help the Jaguars right the ship and make a playoff push in the last three weeks of the regular season.
“I hope we go all the way,” he said.
Growing a Love for Mixed-Martial Arts
Howard remembers first getting into combat sports when he was about 14 years old.
“It’s one on one, me vs. him, kill or be killed,” he said. “It’s like a primal urge for me. It’s just going to war.”
He began informally training with his brother-in-law, who is a U.S. Marine. He said he now trains with Jersey Shore legend and former Toms River East wrestling star Frankie Edgar, who is a former UFC lightweight champion. Edgar, who retired from UFC in 2022, now runs Frankie Edgar Iron Army Academy in Toms River.
“My brother-in-law was the spark to my MMA career, and then after training with him for a bit I wanted to go to a real gym, so now I train under Frankie,” Howard said. “He has amplified the sport for me. He has made it a true passion.”
Howard has a team-high four sacks in six games for the Jaguars this season. (Photo by Benjamin Weiss)
Howard’s parents weren’t exactly thrilled with his newfound passion.
“At first, 100 percent, they hated it,” he said. “They wanted me to do football and live a normal life, but I can’t live a simple life like the rest. I want to achieve. I want to be someone.
“They grew into it. Now my dad loves it.”
While obviously a fan of retired UFC champion Jon Jones, Howard also grew up admiring Khalil Rountree, 35, a UFC veteran who competes at light heavyweight.
“He’s a Muay Thai specialist, and I love striking, and I love his backstory,” Howard said. “He was overweight and addicted to fast food and found Muay Thai MMA, and that transformed him.”
Howard, 17, is not allowed to legally compete in a professional MMA fight until he’s 18 years old, so he just focuses on training now. He looks to one day fight at 205 pounds in the light heavyweight division, where Jones was once an unstoppable force.
He hopes to join a long lineage of Jersey Shore fighters who competed in the UFC, which includes current UFC featherweight Francis Marshall, who wrestled at Point Boro and Manasquan.
“I will be the next guy, no doubt,” Howard said. “No hesitation whatsoever, I keep pushing towards that.”
A Transformation Away from Sports
The same athlete who loves the thrill of violent hand-to-hand combat in the octagon and the football field is also one who does breathing and meditation exercises before the game.
“Last year I used to be scared. I used to have this nervous itch all the time,” Howard said. “Now I’m all about breathing and being calm.
“Over the offseason, I trained my mind to not look at the opponent in front of me. I don’t make eye contact with any of the opposing players. Once I lock eyes, there’s a tension between us. I do what Jon Jones does. He never looks them in the eyes. It’s never personal, just business.”
Howard said he also recently converted to Orthodox Christianity.
“God has gotten me to where I am today, especially with my emotional state,” he said. “I used to be an angry brat, cocky and arrogant in general, but once I found who I look up to, it made me much more calm and relaxed. At the end of the game, I always shake hands with my opponent. They decided to step on the field, so it’s all mutual respect.”
It all adds up to one of the Shore’s more fascinating players, albeit one whose football career will definitely end when Jackson’s season is over this fall.
“I had a couple recruiters try to hit me up, but I declined obviously,” he said. “You know where I’ll be when the winter comes.”
Scott Stump is the football editor and a reporter for Shore Sports Insider. He first started covering Shore Conference football in 1999 and has covered basketball, baseball and seemingly every other Shore Conference sport at some point.
Email: scottstump25@gmail.com
