Among the stakes when the Falcons and Broncos meet Sunday: the Elliss family’s bragging rights
When the Denver Broncos prepared to make their third-round pick in the NFL Draft in April, they were excited to see Jonah Elliss’ name was still on the board.
Denver coach Sean Payton said earlier this season that the team had a second-round pick on the pass rusher from the University of Utah. They believed he had the tools to contribute on the edge on a first-year basis, a need reinforced by a spring injury to last year’s third-round pick Drew Sanders.
There was only one problem. Two choices ahead of the Broncos were the Atlanta Falcons. Their general manager is Terry Fontenot, who previously worked in the New Orleans Saints’ front office as the team’s head coach during nearly all of Payton’s 16 seasons. And on Atlanta’s roster was a linebacker named Kaden Elliss, Jonah’s brother and a seventh-round pick of Payton, Fontenot and the Saints in 2019.
“I turned to George (Paton, Denver’s general manager) and said, ‘Terry’s going to call up the brother; I know,” Payton said this week. “They called up another player and then we were obviously excited to make our selection.
The Falcons selected Washington outside linebacker Bralen Trice, who suffered an ACL injury in the preseason, with the 74th pick. Two picks later, the Broncos took Jonah Elliss.
Payton’s phone immediately buzzed with a text message. It was Kaden.
“I won’t tell you what it said,” Payton said with a laugh, “but I would say the exposure to Kaden really helped us understand the football mentality regarding the next pick.”
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Kaden Elliss also didn’t reveal many details about the exchange.
“(I was) just, ‘You got a good one,’” the Falcons linebacker said. “Other things have been said, but it is what it is. I’m just so excited to have him in Denver and with Sean (and) a good staff out there. We have family out west, so it’s a good place.”
Two weeks after the draft, the NFL schedule was released and a date for an Elliss family reunion was born. On Sunday, when the Falcons visit the Broncos in a matchup between two teams trying to take another step toward the playoffs, Kaden and Jonah will face each other for the first time in the NFL. Both play defense: Kaden as starting inside linebacker who leads the Falcons with 88 tackles; Jonah as an outside linebacker who has played a role in the pass-rush rotation and has two sacks – so there won’t be any direct clashes between the two brothers.
Unless …
“Maybe we’ll find a way to sneak in a special teams match,” Kaden said.
Atlanta linebacker Kaden Elliss leads the Falcons with 88 tackles through 10 games. (Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
The brothers are two of five Elliss family members to reach the NFL. Christian Elliss is a linebacker for the New England Patriots and Noah Elliss is a defensive tackle who spent time with the Philadelphia Eagles the past two seasons and is a free agent. Along with Kaden and Jonah, they are believed to be the only group of four brothers to have played in the NFL. Jonah said Friday he wouldn’t be surprised if Elijah Elliss, a freshman defensive end at Utah, joined the family’s NFL fraternity in the coming years.
“I can’t help but know an Elliss,” Falcons coach Raheem Morris said this week. “There are a million of them.”
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Their father, Luther Elliss, played 10 seasons in the league as a defensive tackle. The starting nine came with the Detroit Lions, who drafted him in the first round in 1995 after an All-American college career at Utah. He played his final season, in 2004, with the Broncos, a fitting end to his career for someone who grew up in Mancos, Colo. Elliss later became team chaplain for the Broncos, a role he filled during the team’s 2015 Super Bowl season.
This 1:00 slate is actually really funny because I just watched Elliss 55 try to fire Dak and then Elliss 52 try to beat Justice Hill and then I saw Elliss 53 come up to take on Tony Pollard.
— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) November 3, 2024
During Elliss’ lone season with the Broncos, it was not unusual for the family’s large van to pull up to the team. Luther and his wife Rebecca have twelve children, seven of whom are adopted. With a family that size, competition was inevitable. Sometimes the fiercest races were those at the dinner table.
“We would make up games. We played every game under the sun, every sport,” Kaden said. “Sometimes it was football. Sometimes it was football or random games we made up.”
Luther’s career served as a road map. Most of the Elliss boys didn’t play football until eighth grade — Kaden sneaked in seasons in fifth and seventh grade — but the love for the sport ingrained in their collective upbringing grew quickly.
“My father was clearly able to guide our work,” Kaden said. “So not just working hard, but also working smart, and showing us where we needed to improve, what we needed to do if we wanted to take that step.”
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Sunday’s game between the Broncos and Falcons is full of familiar connections. Falcons safety Justin Simmons spent his first eight years in Denver after the team drafted him in 2016 with a third-round pick. Thirty of his 31 career interceptions came in a Broncos uniform. He and his wife, Taryn Simmons, have deep roots in the Denver community through their work with the Justin Simmons Foundation, and the safety has been named the team’s Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee three times. He said this week that he will be “a Bronco for life,” but his focus Sunday will be helping the Falcons get their seventh win.
“It’s one thing to practice against him for years, but getting live shots is going to be fun,” Broncos wide receiver Courtland Sutton said. “I jokingly told him, ‘Hey, brother, when you see me coming through the middle, just remember we’re friends.’”
Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, meanwhile, grew up in Denver. He was a Broncos fan whose family had season tickets. He later became a standout football player at Chatfield High School in suburban Littleton, Colo.
“Definitely, when I saw we were going to Denver, (my) family got excited,” Robinson said. “The atmosphere is hard to beat. Probably there and KC are the top two in the NFL. I’m looking forward to going home again.”
Those returns will be special, but reunion games and homecomings happen every week in the NFL. A duel between brothers, in one of their father’s home stadiums, with more than 30 family members on hand? Not so much.
“I played with one of my brothers in college, but this is definitely different,” said Broncos tight end Adam Trautman, whose locker is next to Jonah’s in Denver and who was previously a teammate of Kaden’s in New Orleans. “It was always competitive between me and my brother, and I’m sure they treat it that way too.”
Broncos rookie Jonah Elliss (52) has 21 tackles and two sacks for Denver this season. (C. Morgan Engel/Getty Images)
The Elliss brothers aren’t taking Sunday’s opportunity for granted. But in the end, it’s just another match in an endless series of them. Every year, usually during the Fourth of July weekend, the family gathers for the Elliss Olympics, an event that spans several days and features a rotating list of competitions, from corn hole to board games. The event includes a trophy, decorated with the winners’ names, placed in Luther and Rebecca’s home. Including spouses and close family friends, the competition can have more than three dozen participants.
Trash-talking is an inherent part of the spectacle. Jonah said this week that he and his fiancée are dominating the pickleball competition, a fact that confused his older brother.
“I think the most anyone has scored on us in a game under 11 is three or four,” Jonah said. “We’re pretty good. We killed (Kaden). He didn’t like it.”
However, most seem to agree that Kaden sets the pace when it comes to chirping. So it’s perhaps no surprise that the Falcons linebacker, who already had a head-to-head NFL win over Christian when they met in 2022, delivered the parting words ahead of his matchup with Jonah.
“I’m 1-0,” he said of the Elliss matchups. “We’re going to make it 2-0 this week.”
(Top photos of Kaden and Jonah Elliss:
Todd Kirkland and Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)
