Bryan Sanborn is three years younger than his older brother, Jack, and as it happens, he also plays the exact same inside linebacker position on the football field. Naturally, that has led to comparisons between the two players, which their mother, Malinda, has heard for years.
Same build. Same instinctual feel for the game. Same tenacious tackling style. Sometimes, it seemed as though Bryan was a younger clone of Jack. As Malinda says, if she had a dollar for every time people mentioned Jack when they brought up Bryan, well, she’d have a bigger bank account.
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But as Bryan became a high-major college football recruit, he didn’t want those comparisons to influence how a school viewed him. He also didn’t want the decisions of his brother to dominate his own thought process. Jack signed with Wisconsin in its 2018 recruiting class, played in 11 games as a true freshman and became a starting inside linebacker as a sophomore last season, leading the Badgers with 80 tackles. Wisconsin quickly set its sights on Bryan and offered him a scholarship in its 2021 recruiting class.
Bryan certainly was intrigued because of how well his skill set fit into the Badgers’ 3-4 defense. Yet he wanted to ensure that, if he committed to Wisconsin, he wasn’t doing it simply to follow in his brother’s footsteps.
“I think Bryan wanted to make sure that he was doing it for his own reason and not just because Jack was there,” Malinda said. “I think he was almost trying to find a reason not to go to Wisconsin. And as his mother, I also wanted to make sure that it was not because of me or because of Jack that he would choose Wisconsin. I wanted him to choose it as his own. I wanted him to look at as many other football programs as possible. I made it very clear that I would split my time on Saturday if I had to.”
In the end, Malinda won’t need to split her Saturday road trips from the family home in Deer Park, Ill. Bryan Sanborn committed to Wisconsin in December over offers from Iowa, Iowa State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Vanderbilt and Virginia, as well as seven other programs. He is a three-star prospect who is rated as the No. 19 inside linebacker in the 247Sports Composite.
There’s no denying Bryan’s older brother already being at Wisconsin did have an impact. But Bryan felt confident in how he went about his recruitment and the reasons why he decided to become a Badger.
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“I still wanted to pick my own school and choose the school that was best for me,” Bryan said. “But at the end of the day when I was narrowing down, Wisconsin was in the lead for what I thought was the best school for me. And just to be able to play college football at such a high level with a brother, not too many kids in America get to say that. It’s just a blessing for me and my family to be able to do that.”
Bryan had the benefit of an earlier look at the recruiting process than most high school players experience. Malinda said Bryan tagged along with her and Jack during Jack’s official visit to Wisconsin back in December 2017. Bryan was just a freshman then, and Wisconsin wasn’t actively recruiting him. But being around the coaching staff and the team allowed Bryan to begin building relationships, which ultimately gave the Badgers a head start when he did become a high-caliber high school prospect.
When Bryan was a sophomore, he visited campus with his mom to watch a practice in December 2018 as Wisconsin prepared for the Pinstripe Bowl. Malinda recalled that Jack came over to talk to them, and then coaches offered Bryan a scholarship on the practice field. Bryan had earned a scholarship offer previously from Eastern Illinois, but Wisconsin represented his first Power 5 offer. He committed to the Badgers a year later.
“Part of the thing that probably made him take so long to make his decision was the fact that his brother was there,” Lake Zurich football coach Ron Planz said. “We talked about that a little bit. I think it had a positive and a negative effect in the process because he is his own person. He’s not his brother. They’re different people.
“But I think because his brother is there, he was able to build a better relationship with those coaches than he would with maybe some other coaches, and that gave him some comfort. And I think that was ultimately what led to the decision, in my opinion, was his comfort level with the coaches. And that door was opened obviously by his brother going through it.”
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Bryan said he had visited Madison “easily” more than 20 times between recruiting visits and trips to see his brother.
“I’ve been up there so many times that it’s like a second home now,” Bryan said.
Bryan is a two-time All-North Suburban Conference selection who recorded 108 tackles and six sacks last season for Lake Zurich. He plays with instincts and explosiveness and was regularly a disruptive force because of his ability to read plays before they happen and speed to the ball.
Planz was a first-year coach at Lake Zurich last season after spending five seasons in charge of Division III Elmhurst College. He primarily used a 3-3 stacked defensive front that allowed Bryan to move around with as much space and freedom as possible. The idea was to spring Bryan for blitzes and various pass rushes or to drop him into coverage and chase outside runs.
Planz said Bryan turned his play up a notch during the team’s three-game playoff run after he adjusted to the scheme. During a 14-7 victory against Andrew in a Class 7A playoff opener, Bryan registered a 15-yard sack on third down in the final minute to help his team seal the win. He recorded a key second-half sack one week later in a 14-7 victory against a Hersey team that had averaged 48 points per game during the season.
“I think that whenever you watch me on film, I’m always around the ball,” Bryan said. “I have a good nose for where the football is going to be, where the offense is going, and I just react with my speed. I’m a very aggressive tackler and very aggressive with blockers, which allows me to have a step above the offensive line or the running back.”
Bryan indicated Wisconsin coaches told him how much they loved his aggressiveness on film and noted his passion for the sport was evident. They added that his quality character would be an asset to the locker room. But what also stood out is that the Badgers recruited him in a manner that didn’t suggest they were doing so simply because of his older brother.
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“Every time I talk to Coach (Paul) Chryst, he’s like, ‘Yeah, your brother is here. Even if your brother wasn’t here, you’d still be a top guy for us,’” Bryan said.
Bryan used his brother’s experiences at Wisconsin, both on the field and in the weight room, as a means to better understand the program. Bryan said he is 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds. Jack, who is also 6-2, entered the program weighing 228 pounds as a true freshman and is listed at 238 pounds on Wisconsin’s spring roster, developing into a sturdy, bona fide NFL prospect.
“He’s a totally smarter football player,” Bryan said. “When he’s back now, he told me about how they’ve taught him to be such a better football player on the little things. Like reading the keys to defense. And just getting stronger. The weight training program there is amazing. He’s getting stronger. And that’s some of the things that have shaped him into a better player.”
Jack recently spent 2 1/2 months at home while Wisconsin’s campus was shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. During that time, he and Bryan participated in makeshift workouts together, grabbing cones to do conditioning drills and run at a nearby hill, using resistance bands and focusing on recovery through yoga and stretching. Jack began showing Bryan certain looks in Wisconsin’s defense on his team-issued iPad. Bryan has tried to look at his role in a different way, to recognize what each position is responsible for on the field.
“He’s taught me just the little things,” Bryan said. “Like anybody can get out there, make a tackle. We’ve been playing the game our whole lives. I think we would be able to do that. But he’s talked to me about understanding your gap. We sit down and talk about scenarios, like understand your gap and how you need to get there as fast as you can, but also to understand where your help is and where your teammates are around the field.
“I think him explaining the help, where your teammates are, is just going to make me a better football player, not only for my senior year coming up but also when I get up to campus next year.”
Not surprisingly, Bryan described his style of play as similar to his older brother in terms of his physical, hard-nosed mentality, reactive ability and willingness to stick his face into a play. The two will surely draw more comparisons when they are teammates at Wisconsin in 2021. But Bryan is eager to learn from his brother and continue to forge his own path.
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“We talk about it all the time,” Bryan said. “Like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be so cool for both of us to be there.’ And it’s just so special for my mom, too. To see both her boys on the same team achieving that dream that they’ve always had growing up and working towards, it’s special for both of us and my mom.”
(Top photo by Cathi Volante)
