Two brothers from Doylestown are living the ‘dream’ as NFL coaches. They face each other on Sunday.

Every once in a while, Kevin Wilkins would finally get the better of his older brother in Madden as they played in their Doylestown basement. Drew Wilkins was four years older and a master of the virtual X’s and O’s. So it was a real stunner when the little brother pulled an upset. But the older brother would turn off the video game before the clock struck zero, never letting the win become official.

“I don’t know if I ever successfully won a game,” Kevin Wilkins said. “But I was able to get him to quit.”

The brothers were football-obsessed, from their hours playing Madden to trekking to Lehigh University for Eagles training camp to playing on Friday nights at La Salle College High School. They were determined to make the game a career, blazing paths to the NFL as assistant coaches without playing college ball.

They worked as student assistants in college, landed internships with NFL teams, and did whatever it took to force their way onto coaching staffs. They even coached together for nine seasons with the Baltimore Ravens and New York Giants. On Sunday, the Wilkins brothers will face each other for the first time when the Los Angeles Rams and Jacksonville Jaguars play in London.

Drew Wilkins, 38, is the pass-rush coordinator for the Rams and 33-year-old Kevin Wilkins is an assistant linebackers coach with the Jaguars. They fell in love with coaching watching their dad coach their youth teams, developed their football IQs at La Salle, studied in the NFL under all-time coaches, and slept in their offices as they logged the hours needed to climb the coaching ladder.

On Sunday, the brothers who used to battle in the basement will be on opposite NFL sidelines.

“I used to have to go down there and break up the fights,” their dad, Jim, said.

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Drew Wilkins applied to every NFL team before graduating from the University of Maryland in 2010 when his dad told him he should start thinking about using his finance and supply chain management degree.

“It was good advice,” his mother, Maggie, said.

So Wilkins applied to one non-NFL gig.

He worked during college for the Maryland football team, filming practices and splicing game tape for the coaching staff. He interned with the Ravens, driving every morning from campus in his Toyota Camry to film offensive lineman drills before taking classes in the afternoon while finishing his last college semester. He even coached an inner-city youth basketball team on the weekends. Coaching was it.

Wilkins was a wide receiver at La Salle and could have played college ball at a smaller school. But he went to Maryland to learn how to coach. He was determined to make his dream a reality.

“It was something you always dreamed of but didn’t know if it would be possible,” he said. “Something you worked toward and hoped for. None of it feels like work. Every day, it feels like you win the lottery. To be able to coach football and be around all of these great people is really unique, and you just feel so much gratitude about the people who helped you get here.”

Kevin Wilkins was in college when his brother got hired by the Ravens, who won the Super Bowl in Drew Wilkins’ first season. The odds of becoming an NFL coach did not seem daunting when your older brother is on the sidelines. Kevin Wilkins worked as a student assistant for the University of South Carolina’s football team before landing an internship in 2015 with the Ravens. The brothers were together in the NFL.

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“We talk about how fortunate we are to be in our situation,” Kevin Wilkins said. “I never take it for granted. I’ll look around some days and say, ‘I can’t believe I’m here.’ It’s a dream job with great people, and I’ve been so fortunate to work with [Drew] over the years and learn from him. He’s an unbelievable coach and an unbelievable person. It really is one of those things that never gets old. I truly love it. We’ll text each other from time to time and say, ‘Man, can you believe this is what we’re doing?’”

Jim Wilkins found time every winter to coach his son’s youth basketball and football teams. It was just something to do after work, he said.

“I coached them before they needed real coaches,” the dad said. “My coaching career is nothing worth writing about.”

For his sons, it was. Being coached by their dad, they said, showed them how rewarding coaching can be.

“Every year, he would put so much into his players. Me, my brother, all of us,” Drew Wilkins said. “It seemed like such a great calling.”

Last month, one of Jim Wilkins’ former players greeted the old coach as “Mr. 1-3-1 Wilkins.” Twenty years later, the kids still remember.

“I always wanted to go to Drew’s games to watch him play and my dad coach,” Kevin Wilkins said. “That was the first time I thought about coaching. Watching my dad coach.”

None of it feels like work. Every day, it feels like you win the lottery.

The Wilkins brothers were impacted at La Salle by the late Drew Gordon and his son, Brett, who was the quarterbacks coach after starring for the Explorers.

“I just remember how important football was to both of them,” said Brett Gordon, now La Salle’s head coach. “How they approached the week-to-week planning and preparation. I didn’t know if that was going to lead to coaching one day, but I certainly wasn’t surprised when I found out.”

Brett Gordon introduced new concepts and installed schematic changes to give the Explorers an edge. It was the kind of stuff the brothers wanted to do.

“It was like, ‘Wow,’” Drew Wilkins said. “‘This is the power of coaching.’”

Kevin Wilkins was the backup quarterback at La Salle and could have switched schools to get on the field. But he decided to stay, a decision he credits with making him a better coach.

He watched how the Gordons operated, studying everything they did from drawing plays to motivating players. Wilkins ended his career by delivering a crushing tackle on a kickoff in the state championship during a snowstorm.

“His approach didn’t change based on him being a backup quarterback,” Brett Gordon said. “That’s something I always noticed. The amount of questions he asked and his attention to detail. In high school, it’s really hard for kids who aren’t playing a lot to stay focused and have a sense of urgency. But you could just tell that he was a sponge, trying to get as much information as possible.”

Drew Wilkins worked at Maryland with James Franklin. Steve Spurrier was the head coach at South Carolina when Kevin Wilkins was there. They were hired in Baltimore by John Harbaugh and worked alongside coaches like Jim Caldwell, Gary Kubiak, Marty Mornhinweg, Leslie Frazier, and Greg Roman.

They watched coaches like Mike Macdonald, Jesse Minter, Zach Orr, Anthony Weaver, and D’Anton Lynn go from assistants to coordinators and even head coaches. They’ve worked at every stop with football titans, soaking up as much knowledge as they could.

“I almost feel like Forrest Gump sometimes,” said Kevin Wilkins, who is joined in Jacksonville by fellow Doylestown native and offensive coordinator Grant Udinski. “I’ll look back and say, ‘Oh my God. I was there for that.’ I have more stories and interesting interactions than a fair amount of people. I’ve been able to benefit from that so much.”

Don “Wink” Martindale, then Baltimore’s defensive coordinator, took the brothers under his wing. He brought them both to the New York Giants in 2022, and Kevin Wilkins followed Martindale last season to the University of Michigan. The old-school Martindale loved the Doylestown brothers’ work ethic.

“Early on, he’s taking ideas from me,” Kevin Wilkins said. “Whether they were truly being used or he just wanted to make me feel good, they were on the call sheet, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God. This guy is so collaborative.’ It just empowers you. He really is the definition of empowering and wanting to create better coaches.”

Jim Wilkins watched his son, Drew, coach an NFL practice once, and a player kept messing up a drill. This was the chance, the dad thought, for his son to lose it.

“Drew just looked at the guy and said, ‘It’s hard to be great, isn’t it?’ It’s hard to be great? He didn’t have to yell,” Jim Wilkins said. “He just used his sarcasm in a way where the guy said, ‘I get it. I’m going to do it right next time.’ Those are the kind of takeaways that I tried to do when I was coaching them.”

The dad was at a Jaguars training camp this summer when the team’s defensive coordinator greeted him with a hug. His son, Anthony Campanile told him, is going to be an NFL coach for a long time.

“I was like ‘Wow,’” Jim said. “Nothing makes you prouder as a dad than that.”

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His sons have spent a decade in the NFL, carving out careers that once seemed like lofty dreams. And now they are coaching against each other.

“We’ve talked about these moments and dreamt about these moments,” Maggie Wilkins said.

Those dreams always seemed fun. They imagined it even would be in the Super Bowl. But reality set in this week. One son has to lose.

“For the parents, it’s painful,” Jim Wilkins said.

Jim Wilkins said he wears his sons’ losses worse than they do as a loss lingers for the dad until the next Sunday. The mom of defensive coaches is rooting for a 3-3 tie and will be the fan chanting “Dee-Fence” on every play Sunday at Wembley Stadium.

The parents will be there when their sons are on opposite sidelines. The boys who used to battle over Madden will be playing the real thing this time.

“Their older brother, Michael, had a great line,” Jim said. “He said, ‘Dad, you know Drew can’t turn the game off this time.’”