The Next Bosa: Joey's Younger Brother Nick Is Ready to Face the Hype

It's already a part of the Bosa legend.

Three years ago, Ohio State great Cris Carter was holding court with reporters as the Buckeyes wrapped up an Orange Bowl practice in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Defensive end Joey Bosa, already one of college football's top players by the final game of his freshman season, had been a high school star in town at St. Thomas Aquinas, where Carter was an assistant coach.

"I can't say it because Joey will get mad," Carter said, "but the little brother might be better than Joey."

The little brother, Nick Bosa, had just finished his sophomore season at the South Florida prep powerhouse.

Fast-forward to 2016, and Joey has just ended a long holdout and signed his first professional contract with the San Diego Chargers, who made him the third overall pick in April's NFL draft. And with Nick assured freshman playing time by head coach Urban Meyer, Carter's prophecy is about to be put to the test.

"Nick Bosa is an automatic," Meyer said of the 5-star prospect on national signing day. "He's playing."

Before Joey's breakout freshman season in 2013 had even come to a close, Nick's name was already becoming well-known in recruiting circles, particularly those most focused on the Buckeyes.

Thanks in large part to Carter’s comment, the whispers were growing louder heading into Joey’s sophomore season. The Bosa boy had a younger brother. And he was already one to keep an eye on.

Three years later, all eyes in Columbus, Ohio, are on Nick.

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"I mean, how do you have a better career than Joey Bosa, who was an All-American from the get-go and turned out to be the No. 3 overall pick in the NFL draft?" Rivals.com national recruiting director Mike Farrell asks. "Could you be an All-American as a freshman, sophomore and junior and be the No. 2 overall pick in the draft? I mean, how do you get better than that? That's the challenge that Nick has."

Nick has heard the comparisons. It would be impossible not to. Not only does he play the same position that his brother just vacated, but he’ll be wearing the family No. 97 uniform in his college career after having spent his high school days mimicking Joey's signature shrug celebration.

"Obviously people are going to compare and expect me to play right off the bat and be a top-three pick like he was, but that's not really what I'm worried about," Nick told Bleacher Report just days before reporting to Ohio State. "I'm just worried about getting coached up by [OSU defensive line] Coach [Larry] Johnson and being the best player I can be, and we'll see what happens."

Coming off a torn ACL that brought his own high school career to an end, the younger Bosa knows he has bigger challenges ahead than his older brother's shadow.

"Since I've been hurt all this time, I'm just ready to go put some pads on and just prove that I'm the real deal," he says.

It’s a moment he’s been waiting more than a decade for.

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He was seven when he marched up to his parents and said, "I wanna play football." The demand must have seemed reasonable. Dad John Bosa was a first-round pick for the Miami Dolphins in 1987 and spent three years in the NFL. Mom Cheryl is the sister of fellow Dolphins first-rounder Eric Kumerow, who also played for Miami for three seasons.

"Sorry, son, you're not starting football yet," Cheryl said. "You're seven."

Tears welled up, and so did anger. The self-proclaimed mama's boy was prepared to use every tool at his disposal to win this negotiation, even if it meant deviating from his even-keeled personality.

"I wanna play football!" Nick shouted at the top of his lungs before answering a second rejection by launching himself into what his mom described as a "proper temper tantrum," arms and legs flailing against the tiles of their South Florida home's kitchen floor.

"John and I just kind of looked at each other like, 'How does he know?'" Cheryl recalls. "We didn't push him into it. How does a seven-year-old have that passion inside of them?"

Only Nick can explain.

"'Cause it's me," he says. "In my own head, right when I was seven years old, playing football, I thought I was going to play it forever."

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But knowing his destiny didn’t make growing up Joey’s little brother any easier. And while their relationship now shines through on social media and in interviews, the Bosas' brotherly love was forged in sibling rivalry.

Growing up in Chicago, Cheryl used to find herself and her brother banished whenever they had annoyed their mother sufficiently. "Go down to the basement!" Marie Kumerow would yell.

Raising her own kids in Fort Lauderdale, Cheryl didn't have the luxury of a basement. What she did have was a trampoline out back—although the peace and quiet rarely lasted.

"Typical boys. It always goes back to the trampoline," Cheryl says. "Nick was a tough kid back then, going up against his brother. And then there were two neighbor boys next door, so there was just utter chaos going on on that trampoline. It often ended in blood of some sort—a bloody nose or someone crying. It was always something."

"[Joey] was pretty mean to me," Nick says. "He'd always bully with me and mess with me."

When the net that enclosed the trampoline wasn't doubling as a steel cage for wrestling matches, the Bosa boys would take turns dunking on an attached basketball hoop, their oversized bodies testing the physical limits of their favorite toy. Despite their differences, Joey and Nick always shared a love of athletics, although the three years that separated them prevented them from ever taking the field together.

That is, until high school. Joey had emerged as one of the nation's top prospects during a junior season that saw him tally 50 tackles, eight sacks and 16 tackles for loss at St. Thomas Aquinas. That offseason, Joey, John and Nick took a tour of the nation's top programs, with Joey ultimately committing to Ohio State days after the Buckeyes' spring game.

Nick wouldn't have to wait as long to receive national attention.

All the way back in Pop Warner, parents of opponents and teammates alike would stop the Bosas after games to talk about Nick, who played two grades up because of his size.

"'Oh my god, your son,'" Cheryl recalls the other parents saying. "He was on every all-star team, every year. They only took two defensive players and two offensive players. He was MVP, all-star, every year from seven years old. It was literally crazy."

"I was a lot better [than Joey] to be honest with you," Nick says.

But when he arrived at St. Thomas Aquinas as a freshman, Nick found himself surrounded not only by older players but by future Division I talents, with the biggest star of the bunch being his older brother.

Nick may have been on the fast track compared to Joey, who'd played on the freshman and junior varsity teams before becoming a prep star as a junior, but playing varsity as a freshman at Aquinas seemed like a reach, even for a player of Nick's pedigree.

That didn't stop his mom from dreaming of her boys finally taking the field together.

"The summer going into that year, I said to Joey, 'Oh who knows, maybe you and Nick will be playing together,'" Cheryl says. "I'll never forget Joey looking at me and saying, 'Mom, it's St. Thomas. You know that's not going to happen.' I said, 'Oh you never know. You never know.'"

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John Bosa had similar expectations for his younger son and relayed them to Aquinas defensive line coach Garin Patrick. As Patrick helped develop Joey into a high school All-American, Nick often watched practices from the sideline, sitting out his eighth-grade season to concentrate on bulking up for the rigors of high school football.

"Look at this kid," John Bosa would tell Patrick. "Keep an eye on him."

Like his star player, Patrick had his doubts.

"We rarely get a kid as a freshman or sophomore who can play varsity, just because we have so much talent," Patrick says. "I was thinking we'd put him down on JV for six weeks and then maybe put him up on varsity because he needed to mature a lot and get acclimated to that speed.”

But thanks in part to his father’s lobbying, Nick began training camp practicing with Aquinas’ varsity squad. At 215 pounds, Nick was undersized. He also hadn't played in an organized football game in more than a year.

One of his first assignments in practice was to match up against Kyle Schafenacker, a 6'3", 290-pound offensive guard who had already committed to spend his college career at Connecticut.

"They're going at it, and all of a sudden, Nick turns and hip tosses this kid," Patrick says, his amazement still apparent in his recollection years later. "I went up to John, and I said, 'I've seen enough. He’s on varsity.' He just started laughing and was like, 'I told you so.'"

With Nick snuffing out screens and overpowering centers at nose guard and Joey starring at strong-side defensive end, the Raiders cruised to a 13-2 record and Florida's Class 7A state championship. Their chemistry was apparent on the field, but in Joey's final few months at home before heading to Columbus, the Bosa brothers began to build a bond away from the game as well.

No longer was Nick just tagging along, overselling his interest in music to impress his aspiring-producer brother. Now, he was Joey's contemporary, not merely an impromptu wrestling partner on the trampoline.

"It was a 180," Cheryl says of her sons' relationship. "It went from, 'We're brothers who fight 24/7' to they haven't even been in an argument since then. They are best friends, they're inseparable, I've never seen siblings closer than them.

"Nick was always the little brother who just worshipped his brother. I think it was more Joey starting to look at him as more on the same level rather than being his pain-in-the-ass little brother."

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That relationship is apparent on Twitter, where Nick's handle, @nbsmallerbear, pays homage to Joey's, @jbbigbear. When Joey's college finale ended three quarters earlier than expected because of a targeting penalty in the Fiesta Bowl, the younger Bosa took to Twitter to promise to avenge his brother's ejection.

When Joey had a bye week or the Buckeyes' regular season ended before St. Thomas' playoff run did, he could often be found on the Raiders sideline, reprising a role he played during his baby brother's freshman season, when he wasn't just the star player but also a kind of part-time coach for Nick.

When Nick attended Joey's pro day in Columbus a month before the draft, he donned a Tennessee Titans shirt and hat—a "message," as his dad put it, directed at the franchise that owned the No. 1 pick at the time.

The similarities in the Bosa brothers were also striking in their respective recruitments. Declining to participate in the sponsor-friendly camp circuit, Joey found himself undervalued by recruiting sites—a 5-star talent with just 4-star status.

"Obviously, that's a big regret. He should've been a 5-star," Farrell, of Rivals, admits.

Still, Nick, with scholarship offers in hand since his freshman season—including one from Ohio State—followed his brother's lead and skipped out on showcase camps. Joey's success bought Nick the benefit of the doubt, though, as evidenced by his status as the class of 2016's No. 8 overall player and top-ranked strong-side defensive end.

"I just don't find it fun to go out to camps and run around and try to look good in front of all these people that don't really matter," Nick says on his way to the gym on an early-June Friday afternoon. "Once you have all your offers, which I got pretty early, I didn't feel the need to go do that and just like flaunt and get a bunch of gear and look cool in front of everybody."

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Talk to both Joey and Nick, and you'll find yourself having a hard time telling the difference. Their dry sense of humor and thinly veiled sarcasm often crack through their monotone voices.

In the lead-up to Ohio State’s Sugar Bowl matchup with Alabama, Joey grew weary of reporters asking him to describe Nick Saban's magic automatic office door, which he'd admitted had intimidated him as a 15-year-old camper. "It was," he deadpanned, "a super nice door."

Nick's similar no-nonsense approach has already been on display as well.

During a nationally televised game at Aquinas at the start of his senior season, the camera found him on the sideline with quarterback Jake Allen, who had committed to Florida by that point. With the game in hand, Allen looked into the camera and delivered an enthusiastic Gator Chomp. Then he asked the future Buckeye if he had anything to say.

Bosa stared straight ahead: "No."

"If you met both of us, you'd definitely think we're similar for sure," Nick says. "A lot of people probably wouldn't understand a lot of the things that we laugh at."

Their growing bond was most apparent in one of Nick's toughest times. Nick's high school career came to an unceremonious end with a partial ACL tear in the eighth game of his senior season.

Back in Columbus, Joey was preparing for the final month of his college career. But that didn't stop him from bombarding his brother with calls and texts seeking updates and providing encouragement as Nick recovered from surgery.

"He's really the kind of kid that won't let anything get him down. I think me and my mom and my dad are more worried than he is," Joey told reporters at the time. "I know he's going to recover faster than most people because, I guess, he's a Bosa. That's the only way to say it."

True to his brother's word, Nick was ready for the start of training camp after having taken what his mom described as a "businesslike" approach to his recovery. "He was like, 'OK. Well this is what we have to deal with. So, let's do it,'" Cheryl says. "It was never like, 'Boo-hoo, oh no.'"

Perhaps it's a credit to the Bosa name that when forecasting Ohio State's upcoming season, such a serious injury gets treated like a relative afterthought. Given all his brother accomplished, there aren't many ready to proclaim Nick as better than Joey just yet, but the sentiment that many—including Meyer—have shared is that the younger Bosa is more advanced, which is saying something considering that Joey set the standard for freshmen defensive linemen in Columbus.

"The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree," Buckeyes defensive line coach Larry Johnson says. "He has a chance to be a special player."

Photo via Ohio State

How that will manifest itself in this season remains to be seen. Meyer has already named redshirt sophomore Sam Hubbard the successor to Joey's starting spot, but Patrick believes Nick will begin the season as a situational third-down rusher and eventually work his way into the starting lineup, the same way his brother did three years ago when he recorded 7.5 sacks and 13.5 tackles for loss as a true freshman.

Starter or not, Nick expects to be on the field.

"I'm definitely expecting to get out there and play a lot," he says. "I don't know if it's going to be a starting role right off the bat or however it's going to wind up, but I just want to get out on the field and make an impact right off the bat, and I think I can do that."

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When he finally won his tear-filled battle with his parents over playing football in the first place, Cheryl drove Nick around South Florida searching for a park for him to play at because she didn't think the one Joey frequented was safe for a seven-year-old.

Eventually, she found a field where former Virginia Tech standout T.J. Jackson was running a youth program with players split into different position groups based on their respective sizes.

It didn't take long for Nick to find his place.

"I see him walk up to Coach T.J., who's a big giant guy, and he tugs on T.J.'s shirt, and T.J. looks down at him like, 'Yeah?'" Cheryl recalls. "They had put him with the offensive linemen. He went and tugged on T.J.'s shirt and said, 'I wanna play defense.' He's seven. How the hell does he know that?"

Eleven years later, Nick's foresight has him preparing for the spotlight, something he already received a taste of when the Chargers selected Joey in April's NFL draft. As the TV cameras panned backstage, the Bosa family excitedly wrapped themselves around each other. No member was more excited than Nick, who repeatedly slapped his brother's shoulder while bellowing out, "Let's go!"

"I just knew it was gonna happen," Nick says. "Like, Joey's that good, and I knew he was going to get drafted that high, and when the phone rang, it was one of the best moments of my life, for sure."

As Joey prepared to walk across the Chicago stage and strike his signature shrug with the commish, he reached for his younger brother's head and pushed it against his own. The trampoline fistfights were now a distant memory for two brothers on different stretches of the same path—one prepared to live the Bosa family dream, the other just a few steps behind.

"Just to see all the stuff that he went through definitely motivates me," Nick says. "I just want to get there one day."

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand. Recruiting rankings courtesy 247Sports.