New York Jets veteran of the game Oct. 5 will be Lance Cpl. Matias Ferreira, Suffolk police officer and Marine veteran

Tens of thousands of football fanatics will stop hooting and hollering for the New York Jets during a home game next month to instead cheer on and salute a Marine Corps veteran and Suffolk police officer from Smithtown.

Lance Cpl. Matias Ferreira, 36, will stand on his titanium prosthetics legs in the end zone at MetLife Stadium on Oct. 5, celebrated as the New York Jets veteran of the game.

The Suffolk County police officer whose legs were amputated following an IED explosion during a mission in Afghanistan said he was "shocked," "honored" and "sweaty" after being called up to a podium at the Fourth Precinct Wednesday afternoon — during what he thought was an ordinary, unrelated police news conference — to accept the invitation to the game from former Jets running back Tony Richardson via FaceTime.

The Jets veteran of the game program, now in its fifth year, invites service members and their family and friends to home games for free, according to Steven Castleton, the team’s military and first responder liaison. He said Ferreira was among eight veterans selected to appear at Jets home games this season from over 1,000 nominations.

Ferreira "so stood out," Castleton said, not only for his military service, but his service on the homefront following his injury. When he was sworn into the Suffolk County Police Department in 2017, Ferreira was believed to be the nation’s first double amputee to serve as a full-duty police officer, according to Suffolk Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina.

"We’re going to show a video montage of photos that Matias is going to give me when he was serving in uniform, read his bio," Castleton said of the game appearance, while speaking Tuesday at the Fourth Precinct in Smithtown. Ferreira serves as a patrol officer in the Community Support Unit there.

In between the game's first and second quarters, in which the Jets will be playing the Dallas Cowboys, Ferreira will "be the only one on the field, and he’s going to have 80,000 new friends screaming."

Ferreira’s "amazing story," as Catalina described it Wednesday, is an immigrant story. He arrived in the United States from Uruguay when he was 6 years old.

"Like a true United States patriot," Ferreira joined the Marines, Catalina said.

Ferreira sustained his injury in 2011 when the machine-gunner led his fellow service members into Musa Qala to free the small town from Taliban control, Newsday previously reported. Following an IED explosion, both of the Marines' legs were amputated below his knees and he spent around a year in the hospital.

Since his injury, Ferreira, a father to a 10-year-old daughter and 8-month-old son, said he has gone on an "incredible" mental health journey. He said the past 10 to 15 years have "been a blur because I’ve learned a lot about myself" through therapy as well as speaking with religious leaders and his fellow veterans.

When he appears at MetLife next month, he said he hopes football fans can learn about the importance of "perseverance," which he said he himself learned from friends, some of whom are "also amputees" and others who have no physical injuries.

"If you sit down and talk to people, which is why I enjoy being a police officer, you’ll learn that everyone has a story," Ferreira said Wednesday. "I don’t think that mine is very different, it’s just more of a physical thing. ... If we focus on the bad, that’s all we’re going to look at. I’m always looking for the positive."

The Marine fulfilled his "lifelong dream" of becoming a police officer when he began serving the First Precinct in West Babylon in 2017, Catalina said. Ferreira was president of his class at the Suffolk County police academy, to which he returned as an instructor in 2020 after department leaders "realized that he had a skill in mentoring young people," the commissioner said. He noted that Ferreira has trained hundreds of police officers over the past five years before his recent reassignment to the Fourth Precinct earlier this year.

Catalina teased that Ferreira may yet earn a promotion. In his final remarks Wednesday, he told the Marine: "Hopefully we’re going to be calling you detective real soon."