Zahir Mathis couldn’t feel his neck supporting his body.
The defensive lineman knocked helmets with a linebacker in his sophomore year. He briefly fell unconscious, and awoke panicked to coaches and players by his side.
The collision left him partially paralyzed. Mathis considered quitting football, but after a high school journey filled with injuries and recruiting uncertainty, he found a home at Maryland.
“It was pretty amazing for me just to see it and go through all the ups and downs and all the hardships, and be able to understand that you never want to quit in the game that you love the most,” Mathis said.
Mathis, then at Imhotep Institute Charter High School, was treated for swollen ligaments on his spinal cord and a sprained neck. In his lengthy hospital stay, Mathis needed to relearn how to walk.
“Dad, I don’t know if I’m going to get to do this,” Mathis recalled telling his father.
“You got to dig deep to figure out, how can you get past that point?” His father replied.
It took the defensive lineman about 15 minutes to take his first step as he started using a walker. Mathis practiced each step for about a month, leading him to light jogging and eventually running before he came back to football.
He alternated running with and without pads throughout the week. Mathis played in his first game about two months later — playing a few snaps in Imhotep’s city championship.
His junior year was supposed to be his breakout. Instead, Mathis missed most of the season with a dislocated knee and torn meniscus.
“I was just thinking, ‘How many times am I going to be putting my life, putting my body, putting my pride — everything on the line for this program,’” Mathis said.
Mathis’ doctor warned that he may be unable to play football again. Undeterred, he focused on rehab and returned toward the end of the season.
[Penalties have been a recurring issue for Maryland football under Michael Locksley]
He played in Imhotep’s final regular season game again before coach Devon Johnson called him out afterward for a lack of focus. The team knelt together — still dressed in white uniforms and red helmets — alongside families, coaches and media members.
There, Johnson told him that his coaches and team expected more from him.
“I just had to look myself in the mirror and really have a man-to-man conversation to figure out, ‘How can Zahir Mathis be the man that everybody expects him to be,’” Mathis said.
Mathis watched practice clips and every game he played in that season. He realized his lack of focus and questioned his love for football.
He barely spoke with coaches and teammates during Imhotep’s playoff run that year, recording multiple sacks a game and leading Imhotep’s title push.
“That was the best football that I ever got out of [Mathis],” said Bruce Carson, Imhotep’s defensive line coach and Mathis’ from a young age. “He was unstoppable.”
Mathis was voted a senior captain the next year, where he typically faced double teams. He said the season was rough because he felt distracted from recruitment speculation.
Coaches from programs including Penn State, Maryland and Ohio State traveled to Imhotep to speak with the four-star. Mathis prepared questions beyond football — looking to attend a college that would help grow his family, business and interpersonal skills.
He formed a close bond with Buckeyes’ defensive line coach Larry Johnson and verbally committed to Ohio State in January 2024. With Mathis deciding only a few weeks after his dominant playoff run, Carson said it was a “starstruck” decision.
Mathis dreamed of attending Ohio State growing up, and visited the college in October 2024. While the team’s facilities were impressive, other conditions didn’t suit him.
He felt players weren’t welcoming, and he never developed a close relationship with coach Ryan Day, who he said didn’t go in depth with answering personal questions in their few conversations.
[Maryland football concedes late score for second straight week, falls 34-31 to Nebraska]
“I wasn’t in a comfortable setting,” Mathis said. “When I got in that position, it automatically, 100 percent, made me believe that that environment wasn’t the home environment that I thought that it would be.”
Mathis decommitted less than a month later. There was still a school that showed consistent interest over the years — Maryland.
Mathis played in the Under Armour All-American game in early January alongside Terps quarterback Malik Washington, who he played with in middle school. On a bus ride during the showcase, Washington described Maryland’s familial bond to Mathis and emphasized how the pair could thrive in the Big Ten.
Coach Michael Locksley said Washington played a “huge factor” in bringing the defensive lineman to Maryland, including telling him that Mathis wanted to visit shortly after their conversation.
Mathis spoke with Locksley before he committed to Ohio State, though Maryland wasn’t on his top-five list at the time. One of Locksley’s lines from their conversation stood out.
“He was going to teach me how to fish,” Mathis said.
That meant Locksley would always be in Mathis’ corner. Devon Johnson said players’ chats with Locksley felt like “talking to an uncle.”
Mathis toured Maryland in January 2025 in what he called one of the best visits he ever had. Redshirt sophomore defensive lineman Eyan Thomas guided Mathis over a weekend, showing him food spots, scooter routes and the billiards room in Stamp Student Union. The Terps also rostered many players Mathis already competed with or against.
Mathis’ grandmother visited with him and helped realize Maryland was the right fit on the second day.
“She opened my eyes to see this is the happiest that I’ve been in a long, long time,” Mathis said. “This environment, this program, is something that’s actually going to build me for the real world.”
Mathis committed Feb. 5, becoming Maryland’s top-ranked recruit of the 2025 cycle. He is now tied for the team lead in sacks.
The freshman finds beauty in how the challenges shaped his success.
“It was a lovely journey to go through and throughout the process, it was a lot of stepping stones that I had to fight and face on my own,” Mathis said. “But I would never take it back.”
