About Us Expanded

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Growing up, most people just called us “the twins.” We’re about 12.5 months apart in age and only one grade level apart, but no matter how many times we told people we weren’t actually twins, the nickname never went away. Eventually, we stopped correcting everyone and just rolled with it.

Honestly, we get it. We both had long hair, similar features, and we played the same position in football. Off the field, we were always together. And because we’re so close in age, we shared the same friends, the same schools, the same circles, the same weekends.

We’ve been playing football since second grade, and for almost every season, we played on the same team. The only times we didn’t were Braxtyn’s first year of football, Braxtyn’s freshman year, and Brysen’s senior year, until we went our separate ways for college.

Playing on the same Pop Warner teams was mostly just fun. We bounced around to different positions depending on what the team needed, and we got to be out there with our friends. Our dad coached every team we played on up until middle school, so football was a family thing from the beginning.

To make it easier, Brysen played up every other year so our mom and dad didn’t have to juggle driving between two different fields. And if you’ve ever met our dad, you already know what came with that. Extreme work. Real discipline. No shortcuts. Having him as our coach wasn’t what most people would call a perk, and it definitely wasn’t favoritism. If anything, the standard was higher for us, the discipline was constant, and the joking around was basically nonexistent.

Somewhere along the way, our dad brought home a Rae Crowther sled and a pop-up dummy for the house. We’re actually laughing as we type this, because looking back, the tools we had access to were pretty wild. But that was the point. Work ethic wasn’t a speech in our house, it was built into the routine. And if we started listing all the sayings we grew up hearing, we could probably write a whole separate story just on that alone. Our last year of Pop Warner, we won the championship. We felt like we’d won the Super Bowl.

Middle school was the next chapter, and we stepped into it together. This was a weird time in life in general. COVID was happening and schools here in Georgia closed. Football got postponed, and private gyms like the YMCA and the local fitness clubs shut down too. So we got a storage unit nearby and loaded it up with whatever we could to keep training: racks, a Smith machine, free weights, a leverage squat, the whole setup. It became our personal gym and honestly gave us an outlet during the pandemic.

Our unit number was 252, so we called it Bravo 252 Barbell Club. It gave us a way to keep working, get out of the house, and stay locked in even when everything else felt like it was on pause. We still have this gym till this day. 

We won the middle school championship together. Brysen was playing middle linebacker and Braxtyn was outside linebacker and edge. Again, it felt like the most important thing in the world.

Going into high school at a 7A school, the competition was enormous. Our parents reached out to several trainers. We did a few sessions with two or three different people, but nothing felt like a true fit until we met Jamaine Edge from ATL Football. Coach Edge changed our lives from that point forward. Outside of our parents, he’s been a constant mentor.

It wasn’t just fundamentals. He taught us how to watch film, how to think about the game, how to lock in on the micro details, and how to carry ourselves with real discipline. He also gave the kind of honest, brutal feedback that doesn’t just make you a better player, it makes you a better person.

After our first session, we both walked away realizing the same thing. We didn’t know nearly as much as we thought we did about football or the linebacker position, and neither of us was conditioned to play at the level high school demanded, much less the level it takes to reach college.

Playing high school football together was amazing. We played Mike and Will side by side, and pretty quickly we realized we had an advantage. Because we trained with Coach Edge, we learned how to play complementary football. We always knew where the other one was on the field, and the trust was extreme. There’s brotherhood in football, but nothing compares to being actual brothers who love the game the way we do.

It helped the team, too. From a leadership standpoint, we were always on the same page, delivering the same message to the defense on and off the field. Our goal was simple: outwork everyone, and set the standard.

High school life was also very regimented and disciplined, and at the time we honestly thought it was ridiculous. Our parents set the 4.0 standard back in grade school, and in high school it got even stricter. We couldn’t play sports unless we had all A’s, even with advanced and AP classes.

Football had the same feel. We had a lot of advantages, but we were also always at risk of losing them if we didn’t hold up our end. Our parents invested a lot in us: training, a strength coach, weekly chiropractor visits, Normatec and an ice bath at the house for recovery, even cooked chicken delivered.

We’re laughing again writing this, but it’s true. We ate chicken and rice every single day of high school. Seriously. Check out the Chicken Pound.

And the biggest part is we did it together every day. Watching film together, training, lifting, eating, recovering, everything together. 

Our last year of high school, we combined for 235 tackles. Brysen’s senior year, he broke the single-season school record with 179 tackles. He also broke the school’s all-time tackles record with 465 varsity tackles.

We spent almost five years with Coach Edge, training two to three days a week, every single week, with sessions that ran two to four hours, all the way up until we graduated. And even now, we still train with Coach Edge whenever we’re home on breaks or get the chance to come back.

And through all of it, the message in our house stayed the same. One of the sayings we heard nonstop was the “4 P’s” Plan, Prepare, Practice, Perform. It became more than something our dad repeated, it became how we lived. And even now, in college, that’s still the standard we carry with us.