Tyler Matakevich is on the 2027 College Football Hall of Fame ballot

The thought of attending a family friend’s wedding in Italy this week was enough to put a smile on Tyler Matakevich’s face Monday morning as he went about preparing for the trip.

Then he got some news that topped that.

The National Football Foundation announced the 2027 College Football Hall of Fame ballot Monday, and Matakevich is one of the 80 former FBS players under consideration. 

After coming to Temple as an unheralded linebacker recruit from Trumbull, Connecticut, Matakevich went on to a prolific four-year career on North Broad Street that culminated with consensus All-American honors. He earned the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year award, along with the Bronko Nagurski Trophy and the Chuck Bednarik Award as a senior in 2015.  

Matakevich’s 493 career tackles still stand as a Temple program record, and he became the seventh FBS player to log at least 100 tackles in all four of his college seasons. The Pittsburgh Steelers selected Matakevich in the seventh round of the 2016 NFL Draft, and the Steel City was Matakevich’s home for the first four seasons of his NFL career before he played four more with the Buffalo Bills from 2020 to 2023. 

Matakevich credited Rich Burg, Temple’s longtime assistant athletic director for football communications, for preparing his candidacy for the ballot. The two talked about it back in March when Matakevich returned to campus to watch a spring practice, and it was Burg who delivered the good news Monday.

“He started asking me some questions (back in March), because he was turning some paperwork in, so that was the first that I was like, ‘Oh, shoot.’ Like, I didn’t even realize that I could be potentially even on the ballot,” Matakevich told OwlScoop Monday. “And then sure enough, when he called me this morning, I was honestly speechless. I was just in disbelief, just because when he sent me the list (of players on the ballot) and just seeing all those names on it, and just thinking I’m on those same lists … I don’t know, it’s just sort of surreal.”

Matakevich returned to Temple’s Edberg-Olson Hall back on March 19 to take in a spring practice and talk to several of the program’s players and coaches. 

“While that was the first time we met face-to-face, I was very familiar with his history,” Temple head coach K.C. Keeler said Monday. “You can’t be part of the Temple Football program without being in awe of Tyler Matakevich’s career. He is as legendary as distinguished former Owls Paul Palmer, Wayne Hardin and Pop Warner – who are all members of the College Football Hall of Fame. He should be joining them soon.” 

As Keeler noted, Matakevich would be just the second former Temple player to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame if he is selected. The next class will be announced in early 2027 and inducted during the NFF Annual Awards Dinner at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. 

Where he gets there in 2027 or another year to come, just being considered for the College Football Hall of Fame is an honor for a player who became one of the quintessential examples of an under-recruited Temple player who went on to earn multiple contracts in the NFL, Matakevich said. After a broken foot sidelined him for five games during his senior high school season and affected his college recruitment, Matakevich played a postgraduate season at New York’s Milford Academy.

Even then, an assistant coach named Matt Rhule was the only person who approached Matakevich with an FBS offer. And before he moved along to a nine-year NFL career, Matakevich said the four years that followed were some of his best years in the sport.

“You know, it’s so funny. I honestly really just never really took a look at, like, all the stuff,” Matakevich said of his impressive college resume. “You know what you did, but really just, like, thinking about it, sitting down and thinking about it. I was talking with one of my buddies this afternoon, and we were just naming everything, and I was thinking, shoot, like I remember when all the way back to my freshman year, we were in the Big East, and then just to make it where we went. And then the Nagurski (trophy), the Bednarik (award), the American Athletic Conference (defensive player of the year award). And then the consensus all-American stuff, it’s pretty, pretty wild when you really think about it.

“But just thinking about that time at Temple, we were just out there, just having fun, and all that stuff (Matakevich’s individual awards) happened to take care of itself, you know what I mean? But when I really think back, that was some of my best years of football.”