The Bosa Brothers Invested in Themselves, and the Payoff Has Been Worth It

The dad who raised two NFL stars, a 1987 first-round pick himself, talks about his sons’ success and how Nick and Joey Bosa got here.

You can hear the giddiness in John Bosa’s voice, as he takes you through his sons’ pet project. They launched it in the spring of 2021, and, as Nick went off to California to play for the 49ers and Joey to play for the Chargers, Dad became general contractor, overseeing the construction of a gym in Fort Lauderdale built specifically (and only) for pro football players.

The meticulous detail, as you’d imagine, made it that way.

“The fun thing about it is it’s 4,000 square feet, and it’s a warehouse that I painted all white, so it’s in a row of warehouses where you’d never know what it is,” Bosa says. “And you walk in, and the lobby area is where the wet area starts. You have two cold tubs. A small one is set at 38 degrees; a bigger one that has jets is set at 41. Then there’s a sauna and there’s a hot tub, and then there’s a full shower/bathroom area. And then you walk through those doors and, if you kind of picture just a big, wide-open, air-conditioned space, there’s a rubber flooring with all of the equipment for Joey; a lot of it is customized equipment.”

The elder Bosa’s not done.

“And so the whole left side of the gym is gym equipment, then right down the middle, it’s floating wood. It was actually built by the company that does NBA floors,” he continues. “So it’s a 40-by-8-foot runway of floating wood. It’s basically an NBA floor. And that’s where they do jumps—box jumps, plyometrics, warmups. And then on the right side of the warehouse, you have a full kitchen, washer/dryer, big TV, pool table. So it’s all one big space, and it’s beautiful.”

Bosa, of course, is talking about the place’s aesthetics. But to him, clearly, there’s more beauty in its mere existence than its design could ever tell you.

This, to the Bosas, is about investment. It’s about paying things forward.

Take one look at the Bosa brothers and you can tell how much time they spend in the gym. Now we have some more details :: Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports (Nick Bosa); Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports (Joey Bosa)

When Joey and Nick first showed they shared their dad’s passion for football, he didn’t want to coach them, even though he was a 1987 Dolphins first-round pick himself. Instead, he pledged that he’d pour into them by getting them the very best at every turn, so they could be their best. The kids got the best coaches, trainers, programs, financial advisers, agents—whatever it was, he gave his gifted offspring that edge.

This physical building, completed for the 2022 offseason, is the manifestation of the philosophical next step. Now, it’s the sons’ investing into themselves. John didn’t pay for the warehouse. Joey bought it and Joey brought to life a blueprint the brothers and their trainer, Todd Rice, had for the perfect environment to become better football players.

Joey could do that precisely because such investments made in him paid off, as he became the No. 3 pick in 2016, then got a five-year, $135 million extension signed with the Chargers three summers ago. In a few months, Nick, the No. 2 pick in ’19, should be able to pay his brother back, and then some, with what the 49ers are bracing to give him on a new deal.

Put the two together, and you have a pretty remarkable story—one that shouldn’t go unnoticed this summer, ahead of the brothers’ taking the field again, and with it their place among the NFL’s best players, a result of paying the price, both literally and figuratively, to get there.

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It’s my getaway Monday, so by the time you read this, I’ll be (mostly) unreachable for three weeks. Before I get there, here’s what I’ve got for you in this week’s takeaways …

• A look ahead at the timeline for the Commanders’ sale closing.

• What the Chuck Clark injury tells us about the spot the Jets are in.

• The players’ place in curbing the league’s gambling and gun problems.

• Plus, a separate piece on the 12 things the NFL world will be talking about when I get back in mid-July.

But we’re starting with the Bosas. As I was coming up with my list, it really hit me how remarkable their family’s story is—in how both brothers have reached expectations at each turn and how the family has almost turned into the defensive counterpoint to the Manning family.

That’s why in the middle of last week, I decided to give John a call.

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John won’t talk specifics on Nick’s negotiations, mostly because, again, he’s never seen that as his lane. He’ll let his son’s agent, Brian Ayrault, handle it. It’s not too difficult to see where those talks are going, anyway: The younger Bosa brother is the NFL’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year, just 25 years old, and, as such, is likely to blow past what every other edge rusher, including his brother, has ever gotten, as quickly as he would an offensive tackle.

What Dad will discuss is how remarkable it is that this is where they are, as a family.

As we got into it, how he’d gotten choked up when he and I had talked about Nick in 2019 came up, as did how emotional Joey getting his massive second contract in ’20 was. He also dove into how significant it was to see Nick battle through the groin injury that ended his career at Ohio State, as well as an ACL tear in his second season as a pro, to get here.

“You know …” John said, gathering his thoughts, “when I bring up certain aspects of what Joey’s contract really means to him, generationally, and the wealth that he has now secured for his family and his kids and his grandkids, it’s not something he’s very comfortable talking about. And I think that’s really what’s great about both Joe and Nick, is it’s day to day. It’s one day at a time. And Nick has been … Nick summed it up exactly right at his last press conference with the Niners. He believes he’s going to get what he deserves.

“And if you really think about what he’s been through, each year, it was the cusp of a giant year when he’s had an issue. His senior year in high school, he got hurt. His junior year at Ohio State, and then after the Super Bowl to follow that year up. So I think what he did over the last two years speaks for itself as far as production. He’ll get what he deserves. And it is hard to believe that both of my sons will achieve that.”

He then pauses and says, “It’s their goals and beyond my wildest dreams.”

This is where you might expect to hear some story about John making Nick and Joey run up a sand hill when they were each 7 years old or taking candy out of their diet when they were 11.

The truth is simpler than that.

The first piece, of course, is the genetic disposition both sons had to play football, and not just with their dad being a Dolphins first-round pick in 1987. It’s also from their mom, whose brother, Eric Kumerow, was Miami’s first-round pick in ’88. The second piece, which probably relates to the first, is how competitive both boys were from the very beginning.

“They constantly ruined some of my greatest planned outings,” says John, laughing. “We used to play this game on the beach. It was almost like a kind of handball. And one won, and one lost. And Joey lost. He threw the ball at Nick and hit him in the face. And next thing you know, it was … yeah, so many great planned outings were ruined by those two lunatics.

“I’d warn them. One thing I always did is I always followed through, so I’d give them two warnings, and I would go, ‘Guys, if you keep this up, it’s over.’ And it’d be over. We used to go to the baseball field, and I’d have a bucket of balls and I’d pitch. And next thing you know, the bat’s flying by Nick’s head or something. It was just … it was constant. It was unhealthy.”

Eventually, the competition was channeled correctly, and it grew into a bond between the brothers that blossomed the one year they played together, when Joey was a senior at powerhouse St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale and Nick was a freshman playing on the varsity team.

Which is when the third piece of the equation came into play: Getting to the result they have was never so much Dad moving them toward the family business as it was the boys’ gravitating toward it on their own. John played his last NFL snap five years before Joey was born. His kids heard stories of their dad playing, and they attended Dolphins alumni events, but their dad’s place as a former pro football player wasn’t a constant in their lives.

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They played everything, as Bosa thinks all kids should. They weren’t pushed too young. They would go their own direction, which is the exact advice, when I asked, Bosa says he’d give anyone with a kid who’s young and figuring it out.

“Really, what I would say is expose your son or daughter to a lot of different sports. And let the child pick the path that they feel passionate about,” he says. “I’ve known through the years a lot of talented kids who didn’t have a passion for that sport [they were playing]. It doesn’t matter how much talent they have if they’re not passionate about it, to pursue that sport. They’re not going to enjoy it, and if they don’t enjoy it, they’re not going to thrive.

“So tennis, golf, soccer, my kids played every sport and did a lot of things. And then once the path was obvious and their talent was shining in that sport and they loved it, then [I] just support[ed] them.”

And in the end, playing all those sports, in John’s view, made his sons better off when they did figure out that the sport they loved most was the one their dad did, too. The brothers got agility from soccer and hand-eye coordination from basketball, and by the time they were in high school, all the pieces were in place for this rocket ship of a football family to take flight.

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A post shared by Nick Bosa (@nbsmallerbear)

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John’s also grateful for how football’s now serving as his family’s connective tissue.

His NFL career lasted just three years. And while his own experience having his time cut short due to injuries (after he was barely hurt in high school or college) did make him nervous when his own kids would go down, it also provided them with invaluable lessons on treating their bodies as commodities. His experience owning gyms in South Florida, too, gave him some expertise in helping build the facility they’re working out in now.

Then, there’s what John gets to watch with his own two eyes. Some of that is, for sure, on Sundays in the fall or winter. More is on days like this in June, when he gets out to the grass field that the city lets Nick and Joey use. Dad will roll by at 7 a.m. and see both his kids out there already having worked a sweat up in the sweltering South Florida humidity, knowing they’ll be going all morning, getting lunch, then going to the gym to work out some more.

True to his promise decades ago, when he shows up to see the field or goes to work out at the gym, John keeps his distance, jokingly calling himself “the facilities manager.” He lets Rice—the former Chargers strength coach who’s worked with Joey and now Nick to develop an innovative, intricate, Olympic-style training program—run the show.

But John sees enough to believe Joey (who underwent the groin surgery Nick did at the end of his Ohio State career) has a huge year coming, with pain he dealt with the last four years now gone and motivation from Nick’s achievements in no short supply. Just the same, he sees Nick’s unending drive continuing to run hot. “What worries me about it sometimes,” John says, “is it doesn’t allow him to enjoy a little bit of what his achievements are. I mean, he wins Defensive Player of the Year and he doesn’t put any time or thought into enjoying it.”

And while, sure, John gives himself time to smell the roses and let the pride he has in who has sons have become spill out, there’s also no mistaking how it all happened. Which, in the end, is probably what makes him beam the most.

“I think what I’m most proud of,” John says, “is that they’ve never changed.”

Which is why Dad gets so excited talking about that warehouse his sons converted into a gym, because it’s so much more than just a building.

Really, it’s a monument to how all this came together.