Among the stakes when Falcons, Broncos meet Sunday: Elliss family bragging rights

As the Denver Broncos prepared to make their third-round pick in the NFL Draft in April, they were ecstatic to see Jonah Elliss’ name still on the board.

Denver coach Sean Payton said earlier this season that the team had a second-round grade on the pass rusher out of the University of Utah. They believed he had the tools to be a Year 1 contributor on the edge, a need enhanced by a spring injury to the prior year’s third-round pick, Drew Sanders.

There was only one problem. Selecting two picks ahead of the Broncos were the Atlanta Falcons. Their general manager is Terry Fontenot, who previously worked in the front office of the New Orleans Saints during nearly all of Payton’s 16 seasons as the team’s head coach. 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 I said, ‘Terry’s going to draft the brother; I know it,’” Payton said this week. “They drafted another player and then we were excited, obviously, to make our selection.

The Falcons selected Washington outside linebacker Bralen Trice, who suffered a season-ending 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 with Kaden really helped us understand the football mindset as it pertained to the next pick.”

Kaden Elliss didn’t spill many details of the exchange, either.

“(I was) just, ‘You got a good one,’” the Falcons linebacker said. “Other things were said, but it is what it is. I’m just so excited he’s in Denver and with Sean (and) a good staff out there. We’ve got family out west so it’s a good spot.”

Two weeks after the draft, the NFL’s schedule was released and a date for an Elliss family reunion was born. On Sunday, when the Falcons visit the Broncos in a matchup of two teams trying to take another step toward the playoffs, Kaden and Jonah will face each other in the NFL for the first time. Both play defense — Kaden as a starting inside linebacker who leads the Falcons with 88 tackles; Jonah as an outside linebacker who has carved a role in the pass-rush rotation and has two sacks — so there won’t be any direct clashes between the two brothers.

Unless …

“We may find a way to sneak in a special teams matchup,” 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 who have reached the NFL. Christian Elliss is linebacker for the New England Patriots and Noah Elliss is a defensive tackle who spent time during the past two seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and is a free agent. Along with Kaden and Jonah, they are believed to be the only set of four brothers to have played in the NFL. Jonah said Friday he wouldn’t be surprised to see Elijah Elliss, a freshman defensive end at Utah, join the family’s NFL fraternity in the coming years.

“Can’t help but know an Elliss,” Falcons coach Raheem Morris said this week. “There’s a million of them.”

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Their father, Luther Elliss, played 10 seasons in the league as a defensive tackle. The first 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 career end for someone who grew up in Mancos, Colo. Elliss later became a team chaplain for the Broncos, a role he filled during the team’s Super Bowl season in 2015.

This 1 pm slate is actually very funny because I just watched Elliss 55 try to sack Dak and then watched Elliss 52 try to cover Justice Hill and then I saw Elliss 53 step up to tackle Tony Pollard.

— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) November 3, 2024

During Elliss’ lone season with the Broncos, it wasn’t rare to see the family’s full-sized van pull up to the team’s facility. Luther and his wife Rebecca have 12 children, seven of whom were adopted. With a family that size, competition was inevitable. Sometimes the fiercest races were the ones to the dinner table.

“We’d make up games. We’d play every game under the sun, every sport,” Kaden said. “Sometimes it was football. Sometimes it was soccer or random games we made up.”

Luther’s career served as a road map. Most of the Elliss boys didn’t play tackle football until eighth grade — Kaden snuck in seasons in fifth and seventh grade — but love for the sport that was baked into their collective upbringing grew quickly.

“My dad was obviously able to guide our work,” Kaden said. “So not only working hard but working smart, showing us where we needed to improve, what we needed to do if we wanted to make that step.”

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The matchup between the Broncos and Falcons on Sunday is full of familiar connections. Falcons safety Justin Simmons spent the first eight years in Denver after the team drafted him with a third-round pick in 2016. Thirty of his 31 career interceptions came in a Broncos uniform. He and his wife, Taryn Simmons, rooted themselves deeply into the Denver community through their work with the Justin Simmons Foundation, and the safety was named the team’s Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee three different times. He said this week he’ll be “a Bronco for life,” but his focus Sunday will be helping the Falcons get their seventh win.

“Practicing against him for years is one thing, but to get live bullets is going to be fun,” said Broncos wide receiver Courtland Sutton. “I jokingly told him, ‘Hey, bro, if you see me coming across 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 the suburb of Littleton, Colo.

“Definitely, when I saw we were going to Denver, (my) family got excited,” Robinson said. “The atmosphere is tough to beat. Probably there and K.C. are the top two in the NFL. Looking forward to getting back home.”

Those returns will be special, but reunion games and homecomings happen every week in the NFL. A matchup of 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 obviously 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 with me and my brother, and I’m sure that’s how they’re treating it, 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 at the end of the day, it’s another competition in a never-ending string of them. Each year, usually during Fourth of July weekend, the family gathers for the Elliss Olympics, an event that spans multiple days and has a rotating list of competitions, from corn hole to board games. The event includes a trophy, emblazoned with the names of the winners, that resides at Luther and Rebecca’s home. Including spouses and close family friends, the competition can include more than three dozen participants.

Trash-talking is an inherent part of the spectacle. Jonah shared this week that he and his fiancée dominate the pickleball competition, a fact that rankled his older brother.

“I think the most someone scored on us in a game to 11 is three or four,” Jonah said. “We’re pretty good. We killed (Kaden). He did not like it.”

Most seem to agree, though, that Kaden sets the pace in the chirping department. So perhaps it’s no surprise the Falcons linebacker, who already owns 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 this 2-0 this week.”

(Top photos of Kaden and Jonah Elliss:
Todd Kirkland and Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)