Broncos minicamp preview: Austin Ekeler’s brother Wyett, Eaton native, looks for ‘fairytale story’

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. Yet he simply continued to step into opportunity when it drifted across his doorstep.

Years into Austin’s NFL career, now an All-Pro returner with the Washington Commanders, younger brother Wyett is trying to walk the same path. Both went undrafted: Austin, a running back out of Western Colorado in 2017, Wyett, a safety out of Wyoming in 2025. Across the past month and a half training together in Virginia, Austin has given his brother the same advice a coach once told him: Don’t let it be something you didn’t do that caused you to fail.

This weekend, Wyett will have the chance to crack the Broncos’ roster at Denver’s rookie minicamp, some hundred miles from that house back in Eaton.

“That would definitely be an epic, kind of fairytale story,” Austin told The Denver Post.

Wyett got more shine than his older brother out of high school, running for 22 touchdowns his senior year as a two-way star at Windsor High. After starting for three years at Wyoming, he’ll have an uphill climb to cracking Denver’s roster due to the Broncos’ depth in the secondary.

But his brother made a way before him. And before Wyett left for Denver on Thursday morning, Austin gave him a final word of resolve: “You’re ready.”

“I really just want to show these guys,” Wyett said, “that I’m here to play.”

A host of Colorado natives beyond the younger Ekeler are looking to find a home with the Broncos this weekend, as Denver hosts its rookie minicamp from May 9-11. In addition to a first look at drafted rookies like Jahdae Barron, RJ Harvey and Pat Bryant, it’s a chance for the Broncos to take a long look at some local talent that slipped through the cracks.

Colorado State safety Henry Blackburn is one of the most recognizable faces invited — a longtime leader in the Rams’ secondary and prolific tackler. Blackburn told the Post he’s been training in Nashville, where he’s been getting a special-teams education from former CSU and Tennessee Titans punter Ryan Stonehouse.

After a tumultuous college career that included an infamous hit on CU’s Travis Hunter in the 2023 Rocky Mountain Showdown — and subsequent peacemaking — Blackburn will have an opportunity to continue a Colorado journey that began at Boulder’s Fairview High.

“It’s just the greatest blessing that I could’ve ever asked for,” Blackburn said of the Broncos’ minicamp invite.