When the Patriots’ Christian Elliss was a baby, his parents once made it halfway down the block before suddenly realizing — like Kevin McAllister’s mother — that they’d left their young son in his crib.
“Sometimes those things would happen,” Luther Elliss chuckled, “like a ‘Home Alone.'”
Growing up, the Ellisses developed a call-and-response name-count system with their children. This got more difficult with each passing month and each passing year, because Kathy Kunkel and her “A Act of Love” adoption agency kept calling from Sandy, Utah, and Luther and Rebecca Elliss believe the Bible instructs that every human is adopted, in one way or another. Around Luther Elliss’s fifth season as an NFL defensive lineman, the family went from three kids to six in the span of a year.
Eventually, Denver’s Jonah Elliss and New England’s Christian Elliss found themselves as part of a 12-person Elliss troupe in Utah. Luther and Rebecca would call 15-passenger vans to shuttle the family to and from the airport on trips, and search for ample bedroom square-footage whenever purchasing a new home. They kept as watchful an eye as they could. But kids, sometimes, got left behind. Briefly.
Denver Broncos chaplain Luther Elliss during the team's NFL rookie camp football practice Saturday, May 7, 2016, in the team's headquarters in Englewood, Colorado. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski) New England Patriots linebacker Christian Elliss (53) celebrates during the first half of an NFL divisional playoff football game against the Houston Texans on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026, in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)They all helped raise each other, in one form or another. There was plenty of love. Tough love, too. Four Elliss brothers — Jonah, Christian, the Falcons’ Kaden Elliss and former Eagles DT Noah Elliss — went on to play pro football. Luther kept an eye on them as much as he could. But it wasn’t until Jonah graduated from Utah, a couple years back, that his dad heard about some of the shenanigans his older brother Christian would pull.
“Pinning him down, doing the whole loogie thing, spit-on-you,” Luther said.
The kids were downstairs. Luther would be upstairs. He’d have no idea.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a bad parent,'” Luther chuckled. “How did I miss all that?”
On Sunday, the Elliss crew will count names and invade Denver, with Broncos outside linebacker Jonah and Patriots ILB Christian facing off in the AFC Championship Game. The two are as close as any within the group of 12, two of Luther and Rebecca’s four biological kids. Christian told New England reporters this week that he and Jonah have a “side bet” on the outcome Sunday, and Luther’s excited to watch his boys “bump heads” on special teams.
And it’ll be another full-circle moment — after facing Kaden and the Falcons in November 2024 — for 22-year-old Jonah Elliss, a raw but blossoming outside linebacker who’s grown up looking towards his older brothers in a life of constant motion.
“Nobody’s going to beat him, and no one’s going to catch him,” Rebecca said. “So I think that’s just ingrained in him, from young. Probably personality, probably environment, a combination of both. He’s just — he’s a goer.”
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“It just kinda spiraled pretty quickly,” Rebecca said.
Denver Broncos chaplain Luther Elliss during the team's NFL rookie camp football practice Saturday, May 7, 2016, in the team's headquarters in Englewood, Colorado. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)Along the way, the Ellisses became one of the most prominent football families in the modern world. Jonah, Christian and Kaden were biological children, and have grown into standout NFL linebackers. But Noah Elliss was adopted, and so was Elijah Elliss, a current Utah linebacker.
“It’s a blessing for me,” Kunkel said, choking up. “Because I’ve got 10 children, and I’ve adopted eight of my 10. To me, personally, and to Act of Love and our sweet birth moms that have their children with the Elliss family — it’s a blessing that they have so much success within this family.”
People have asked Luther over the years: What’s the secret? How are you training them?
He shrugs. He tried to get them to play every sport except football. But the train ran away from the station a long time ago.
“I’m like, ‘Guys, I’m not doing anything different than you guys are with your own children,'” Luther said.
The key, for Jonah Elliss, was the environment. He was one of the youngest and was go-go-go from the moment he could walk, his parents remember. He only stopped to sleep or eat. He was always curious. Always wanting to be involved with his army of brothers.
“I think it’s always been just to keep up,” Rebecca said.
One can see it, years later, in his play. Jonah is a power rusher without a power rusher’s frame, standing at 6-foot-2 and 246 pounds. He is aggressive and violent off the edge. He recorded five sacks in 2024 as a third-round rookie out of Utah, and has flashed as a run-stopper off the edge in his second year in 2025. But his season’s been interrupted at two different intervals, with rib and hamstring injuries.
Luther said Jonah’s evaluating the way he trains to try and stay healthy into the future, after his rookie year ended with a broken scapula in last year’s wild-card loss to the Bills.
“When you play like that, your body will eventually break down, and things will happen,” Luther said. “So it’s just being smart for him, I think, and learning the game more, and how to use his aggressiveness and his finesse. I think he can add a little more finesse to his game, a little bit, to help him.”
Sunday, though, will bring sheer hand-to-hand, Elliss-on-Elliss combat. And there may be a decent percentage of Elliss ties in the stands at Empower Field on Sunday, as the legacy of a foremost football family continues to grow.
“Hopefully our Elliss is better than their Elliss,” Patriots special-teams coordinator Jeremy Springer said, “at the end of the day.”
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