Their lives were spent in wide-open Colorado countryside, the Ekeler family home a bumpy drive from a town too small to grasp the weight of NFL dreams.
Austin and Wyett Ekeler grew up seven years apart, but accustomed to the same lifestyle in Eaton. They played catch outdoors, indoors. They fished for bass. They rode horses and watched others ride bulls. They wrestled. Austin usually won.
Football, more so, was an afterthought. There were no high expectations, as Austin put it, that he’d ever make the NFL. He was 5-foot-5 as a freshman at Eaton High and a zero-star recruit out of high school.