There’s something about brothers—twins even—that the Pittsburgh Steelers really seem to love. They already play host to three of the most well-known pairs of NFL siblings in the NFL right now, with Maurkice Pouncey, Terrell and Trey Edmunds, and of course T.J. and Derek Watt.
And they added to that total with the 2020 NFL draft, selecting two pairs of twins—though in only one of them are both siblings in the NFL. You’ve probably already heard of Carlos Davis and his twin brother, Khalil Davis, who was drafted earlier on by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But fourth-round pick Kevin Dotson is also a twin, his brother being Kenny Dotson.
“Having a twin, you are born with a best friend already”, he told Teresa Varley recently. “You have a head start on everybody else. Having that close bond, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. He is the person I am closest to. Everything we have done we have done together”.
We have seen how big that bond could be even within sports. The Watt brothers are training together right now. So are the Edmunds brothers. Even the Davis brothers have divided their house so that they each could work their virtual meetings with their new teams, and then train together when applicable.
“That’s the closest you could ever get to someone”, Davis said of the bond that he shares with his brother. “The weirdest bond you could ever have is being a twin. You pick up on things that the other does. You do certain things without realizing the other person did it. You have a feel for it”.
I’m not a twin, so of course I could never relate or compare, but it’s certainly something to wonder about. Not even the Watts and Edmundses understand what that’s like, but Pouncey does, with his identical twin brother, Mike Pouncey.
Siblings share a bond that nobody else can ever relate to, fully, sharing genetic information. Fraternal twins have an even more direct bond, and then identical twins, who originate from one common fertilized egg, take it to another level.
“I don’t know if I could have done it without having a best friend there along the way”, Davis said about rising to the top of his craft. “There were some hard times there. It was always nice to have someone there to reassure you. I knew if he didn’t give up, I wasn’t giving up”.
He and his identical twin brother played alongside each other on Nebraska’s defensive line for the past few years before coming out in the draft. Now Carlos is heading to Pittsburgh and Khalil will be heading to Tampa Bay when training camp opens up.
Until then, however, they will have had this quarantine time to share the first leg of their NFL journey together, whereas in any other offseason they would have already been separated. Having no physical offseason is a major setback, but having your brother with you going through the same thing, even with another team, is a hidden advantage as well.
