Bears special-teams standout Brendon Ayanbadejo did not need caller ID Monday morning to know who had buzzed his cell phone with a message meant for his eyes only.
Ayanbadejo would recognize the boldness of big brother Obafemi, a fullback for the Arizona Cardinals, from any area code.
“He has the nerve to text-message me and ask, `How’s it going to feel to be 5-1?”‘ Ayanbadejo said Wednesday, laughing. “He believes they can beat us, as everyone on that team should.”
Nobody at Halas Hall interpreted the boast of Ayanbadejo’s brother as a Roy Williams-like guarantee or anything more than the friendly spillover of a sibling rivalry. Those who know both players understood that audacity runs in the Ayanbadejo family as much as athletic ability.
“I was only getting him ready,” Obafemi said on the phone after Wednesday’s Cardinals practice.
Obafemi, 18 months older than Brendon, 30, always has.
When he was with the Baltimore Ravens earlier in his career, he put a roof over his younger brother’s head and gave him an allowance as Brendon’s pro football odyssey traversed between Canada and Europe.
Reflecting on those days as he prepared to face his brother on the football field for the third time ever, Brendon doubted he would be in the position he is today without that brotherly love.
“I did what any brother would do and he’d have done the same for me,” Obafemi said.
The Nigerian-Irish siblings, both born in Chicago, developed a special closeness as toddlers after the family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, for three years before moving back to live in the Lathrop Homes on the Near Northwest Side. They would not see their biological father, Olatunde, again until they were in their mid-20s.
When the boys were 10, they relocated to the security of Santa Cruz, Calif., where sports and academics helped create avenues of opportunity that didn’t exist in Chicago.
Growing up, the brothers drove each other on the field and sometimes drove each other crazy fighting about things brothers fight about: toys, clothes and girls.
Brendon, a wrestler good enough to be offered college scholarships, recalled Wednesday that more than a few tussles escalated into breaking drywall, throwing furniture and tipping cars.
“He was more of a troublemaker, the class clown, a little more erratic than I was,” Obafemi said.
Steve Cox, the head football coach at Cabrillo Junior College in nearby Aptos, Calif., who coached both Ayanbadejos, might agree. Cox noticed how the brothers resembled each other, how they doted on their mother and the unrelenting way they punished their bodies. But that is where the comparisons stopped.
To illustrate his point, Cox recalled Brendon’s recruiting trip to UCLA, when the prospect talked a Bruins assistant into driving him to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena after hours so he could jump the fence just to see the field.
“They were both highly intelligent kids with good attitudes,” Cox said. “Brendon was different because he was the kind of kid who just walked to a different drummer.”
Through four years at UCLA, three CFL teams, one NFL Europe team, and four NFL seasons, not much has changed.
Brendon Ayanbadejo likes to body surf in California and owns a stone company in Florida. He contributes to a blog for a local TV station, used to write a weekly column for his hometown newspaper and once referred to his game-day mind-set as “on the edge of insanity.”
He still wonders about law school and considers himself a fashion plate, according to teammates.
“If there were a catwalk right here, he’d gladly walk it perfectly,” linebacker Lance Briggs said.
Briggs also called Ayanbadejo a master impersonator whose imitation of any given Bears player or coach can crack up a meeting room at a moment’s notice.
As the Bears continue doing a pretty good impression of a Super Bowl contender, Ayanbadejo has been leading a special-teams unit ranked No. 1 in the NFL, based on a complex rating system of 22 categories.
He has 34 credited blocks, seven tackles and two fumble recoveries, the second coming Sunday against a Bills unit billed as the NFL’s soundest.
“After that, I think we have to reconsider who has the best special teams in the NFL,” Ayanbadejo said confidently.
Monday night’s challenge is one the Ayanbadejos have anticipated since the schedules were released last April.
Both brothers play on every coverage and return team, increasing the chance they will come into contact with each other. That prospect sounds like almost as much fun as when the two were Miami Dolphins teammates for a season in 2003.
“Before the game he’s my brother, after the game he’s my brother–but during the game he’s just another guy who wears No. 30,” Brendon said. “And I’m going to smack him.”
Expect the smack talk to continue until kickoff when a “Monday Night Football” national audience gets a peek at the Ayanbadejo family squabble.
“My mom already has called and asked for Super Bowl tickets,” Brendon said. “So she’s going to root for the Bears. Why? Because the Bears are going to be 6-0.”
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dhaugh@tribune.com
