All eyes are on Deuce. The 80-pound, 10-month-old Doberman, with ears sticking straight up like a ref signaling touchdown, runs into a fenced-in pit full of pebbles and makes a beeline for a smaller dog. They run up and down along the fence, playing and chasing each other, and the humans nearby can’t help but watch the big dog cover such a tremendous amount of ground. In a park just a few miles from downtown Denver, several dozen people are enjoying a sunny afternoon and nobody so much as turns their head toward the soft-spoken NFL star, his loose-fitting white hoodie hiding his physique.
If Deuce were a football player, he’d be a wide receiver, Patrick Surtain II says: “He’d be a good little receiver. He got the speed. Changes direction good. Quickness.”
But?
“I’d lock him up though,” the All-Pro corner and reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year says. Of course he would. He locks up everyone else. “He wouldn’t get off the line of scrimmage,” Surtain says, flashing a grin.
Deuce is a fitting name for the dog. It’s the continuation of a branding exercise that Surtain began in high school. “I believe two is a lucky number,” he says. He decided long ago that he prefers the Roman numeral II to the suffix Jr., just to be a little different. His name preceded him at American Heritage school in Plantation, Fla., given that he was the son of Patrick Surtain Sr., former star of the nearby Dolphins. The elder Surtain was close at hand, too—he was the head coach during his son’s senior season. So everyone knew the star corner as Pat Surtain II.
Surtain’s Heritage teammate Anthony Brown once called him PS2, like the video game console, and the nickname stuck. So why not lean into it? It became his jersey number at Alabama, where he won a national championship and played in two title games in three years. And when the NFL loosened its uniform numbering policy just in time for his rookie season in 2021, Surtain carried the lucky digit with him to the pros.
This was a big offseason for Surtain. In February, he won an award that will change his standing within the game. His Broncos are coming off a playoff berth, his first after four seasons in Denver marked by the instability of changing coaches and quarterbacks. Now, finally, he may be ready to pen the most promising pages of a saga he’s been writing his whole life.
Call it the Pat Surtain NFL story. Chapter II.
MORE: Patrick Surtain II in Photos: Sports Illustrated Photo Shoot
Big Pat, as Surtain Sr. is known among family, was the Dolphins’ second-round pick in 1998. He played cornerback in Miami for seven seasons, making three Pro Bowls and a pair of All-Pro teams. Little Pat was born in the spring after his dad’s second pro season.
“I can remember him being at training camp practice with the Dolphins and really just starting to walk,” says Big Pat. “Him running on the field with a football.”
Little Pat’s obsession with the game hardly ended there. “He used to draw these elaborate football stadiums,” his dad says. “At a very young age. I remember one day he posted a picture, like, One day I’m gonna be here.”
Surtain was traded to the Chiefs during the 2005 draft. He signed an extension and played out the final four seasons of his career in Kansas City, which is where Little Pat’s earliest football memories took hold.
“We had our own suite, and he was always locked in on the game,” says his mom, Michelle. “I remember him being younger and loving everything about football. If you told him a player’s name, he knew their number. Or vice versa. If you said, ‘What player is No. 23 on Chicago?’ Or whatever. He would know the names off the top of his head.”
One of his first games in youth football was in Arrowhead Stadium, where his dad played on Sundays. Another time, his team was invited to Arrowhead to take part in Chiefs pregame festivities, which included being on the field for the coin toss. The two Surtains snapped a photo together, which the younger Surtain says is among his first memories of the sport. “They looked like giants,” he says of the NFL players. Now the 6’ 2″, 202-pound corner is one himself, living so many of the experiences his dad once did, basking in the full-circle nature of his life and career.
For example: In 2006, Pat Surtain Sr. played in a Broncos-Chiefs game at Arrowhead on Thanksgiving. In 2025, Pat Surtain II will play in a Broncos-Chiefs game at Arrowhead on Christmas.
After Big Pat’s retirement, the family moved back to South Florida. Little Pat and his two younger sisters all went to American Heritage, a K–12 prep school and a football powerhouse that would boast a dozen active NFL players in 2024. Surtain coached his son in youth football, and when Little Pat was in junior high, his dad took a job on the high school staff. During Surtain’s four years of high school, his dad was the defensive backs coach for two seasons, the defensive coordinator his junior year and the Patriots’ head coach for their final season together.
Little Pat grew up playing running back—common for the most athletic kid on a youth team—but by high school he had gravitated to his dad’s pro position.
“Very early on we would go out there and we would do DB drills,” Big Pat says. “So I knew eventually he would play on that side of the ball. As he started maturing into his body, it just came naturally. I knew that the fundamentals were there from early on, and he just excelled at it.”
As the elder Surtain moved up the coaching chain, his attention was dispersed across the team and he spent less time working directly with his son. Every now and then, though, he’d have to come down on Little Pat. “Sometimes I had to make an example,” he says. “Like, Oh, he’s yelling at Pat, we’re not exempt from it.” But that was rare.
Little Pat’s steady demeanor helped him navigate his high-profile circumstances. “Honestly, I was just playing football,” he says. “I didn’t really understand pressure like that. I just play the game, play the cards I was dealt and just keep it rolling day by day.”
He was recruited by Nick Saban to play at Alabama and capped off three years in Tuscaloosa by winning the 2020 national championship, which he says is still the highlight of his football career.
Vance Joseph has seen plenty of cornerbacks. The Broncos’ defensive coordinator played the position himself for two years with the Jets and Colts, before embarking on a coaching career that now spans two decades in the NFL. In another fun twist of how the Surtains’ lives are intertwined, Joseph and Big Pat go back to when they both were growing up in New Orleans. Both are from football families. Joseph’s older brother, Mickey, is the head coach at Grambling State and his younger brother, Terry, played briefly for the 49ers.
Joseph raves about what a marvel Surtain is on the field. When he interviews corner prospects at the NFL combine and asks them whom they watch film of, they talk about Surtain. The coordinator believes anyone can learn from watching his star player. “[They may say], ‘I don’t have Patrick’s size,’” says Joseph. “‘I don’t have his length. I don’t have his speed, maybe not his physical talent. But, man, I can play with that leverage, I can play with that knee bend, I can play with that eye placement. How he pedal-plants and drives.’ It’s a coach’s dream.”
Joseph says Surtain has the smarts to pair with his rare, physical gifts. With age and experience, Joseph adds, “He’s getting that edge that you want all great players to have. Like, I dare you to throw it at me. I dare you to run it my way.”
Joseph remembers one game when the Broncos were up big late. “Pat’s playing kind of soft and he was playing smart,” he says. “But I was trying to get him to play dominant. He’s thinking, ‘O.K., we’re up by two or three scores, I don’t want to give up a big play here.’ I’m thinking, ‘Patrick, you’re Pat Surtain. He’s not gonna catch the ball on you, long or short, so press the guy.’”
Joseph says Surtain makes his life easier every week, covering deficiencies or allowing certain schemes. The coach considers it part of his job to keep his star involved by forcing teams to throw toward him. So he was as thrilled as anyone to see Surtain win DPOY.
“As a corner, it’s tough to win that award,” Joseph says. (Only seven have in 54 years.) “Because 95% of what Patrick does, no one ever sees. Now, when he makes the pick and he makes the tackle, he makes the big play on third down, everyone sees that. But no one sees the second-and-8 when he’s covering his guy like a glove.”
Joseph can’t say enough about how Surtain remains coachable and still knows he has areas to improve. “That goes back to how his parents raised him,” he says. “I’ve never coached a player of his magnitude that’s been so humble and such a sweetheart of a person.”
“I wish he wasn’t that way all the time,” Vance adds with a chuckle. “Even my first year coaching him, I told him, ‘I wish you wasn’t so nice.’”
Surtain’s initial impression of Denver was exactly what you’d expect. “My first thought was, ‘What’s a kid from South Florida doing out here in Denver, Colorado?’” he laughs now. “I was a little nervous at first.” It took him a month to adjust to the altitude. And to the climate. December of his first season brought the snow. “I mean, I lived in Kansas City,” he says, “but I think snow as an adult is different.” But don’t get him wrong. Draft night 2021 was a highlight for him—and for the whole family. One year after a fully virtual NFL draft at the onset of COVID-19, Surtain’s draft class enjoyed a socially distant return to the physical world. The venue in Cleveland had an indoor space for the family to be together as the Broncos made him the ninth pick.
“It was something that he talked about and wished for, for a long time,” his mom says. “So just to see his dreams come true, it was really special.” Even for a kid who grew up watching his dad in the league and knew from a young age he could do the same.
“It doesn’t hit you until it hits you,” Big Pat says. “He got the phone call from Denver, and you could see his whole demeanor change. The excitement. The culmination of all the hard work. It really hit him at once and it hit the whole family at once that he’s gonna be playing in the NFL.”
Surtain made a highlight right away, with a pick-six in his preseason debut in Minnesota. Pat Sr. and Michelle were wearing their No. 2 Denver jerseys in the upper deck. “We were in the ceiling,” Michelle jokes. “We were screaming. … [People were like] That must be the parents.”
These days, travel to games is a little tougher. In 2023, Big Pat was hired as the defensive backs coach at Florida State, and the Seminoles practice on Sundays during the season. Michelle divvies up the schedules, taking in mostly home games in Tallahassee and Denver.
Of course, Big Pat still watches his son’s games and shares pointers. Not all NFL players have dads who coach their position at a Power 4 school, who’ll call you up on a Wednesday and question you about a play where you had inside leverage and the receiver released outside. The reigning Defensive Player of the Year does.
Big Pat says most of the time when he passes along notes, Little Pat already knows what he did wrong and is working to fix it. “He’s a grown man now, so I don’t wanna blab that way,” Big Pat says. “But he does know if Dad says something, then Dad knows what he’s talking about.”
Life in the NFL has not been all smooth sailing. The Broncos finished last in the AFC West in both of Surtain’s first two seasons. Vic Fangio out. Nathaniel Hackett and Russell Wilson in. Hackett out, Sean Payton in. Wilson out, Bo Nix in.
The low point came in Week 3 in 2023. It was Little Pat’s first—and so far only—return to South Florida. His first pro game at Hard Rock Stadium, the same building where Big Pat suited up 58 times for the Dolphins.
Big Pat surprised him by showing up to the game, along with around 30 family members, even meeting him during pregame on the field, where Little Pat warmed up wearing a shirt that had his dad’s name in Dolphins aqua and images of him in uniform.
The Dolphins scored 70 points that day. They could have set the all-time single-game scoring record but chose to kneel down instead of kicking a field goal on the game’s final play.
“Unforgivable,” the younger Surtain calls the game. “Obviously they was good, but they ain’t that damn good. Scoring 70 points. I feel like we didn’t execute that game. And yeah, we just got whooped.”
Though it galvanized them. “We all took our lesson that day and moved on,” Joseph says. “At the end of the day, it was one game. It wasn’t fun. It was embarrassing. But we didn’t look at it like our lives were over. We looked at it like, Let’s go correct [things] and move forward. And I think we’re better off for it.”
One note stands out from the box score of that game, aside from Miami’s 10 touchdowns: Surtain and the rest of the starting secondary played 100% of the defensive snaps, even after the Broncos fell behind by 50.
“It just spoke to those guys’ character that those guys wanted to finish the game,” Joseph says. “No one even talked about coming out of the game; that wasn’t even mentioned.”
The team quickly turned things around. The Broncos won the following week in Chicago. A 1–5 start gave way to a five-game winning streak. From Weeks 6 through 14 they didn’t allow more than 22 points in a game. That stretch run set the stage for the season to follow.
In came Nix, the 12th pick in the 2024 draft and the sixth quarterback off the board. He led the team to 10 wins and a playoff berth, including a 5–2 finish to the regular season.
Surtain says that Nix’s energy was contagious. The defense also knew from the season before that it could step up to support a rookie quarterback. “That’s what the league’s all about,” he says. “’Cause you know the defense is gonna try to create havoc on rookie quarterbacks, and we got to do the same as well. That’s what we did the whole season. Doing our part.”
The Broncos’ defense finished third in points allowed and second in yards per rush and net yards per pass attempt. The season ended with a 31–7 wild-card loss in Buffalo, but it was a major step forward and brought hope for a sustained turnaround.
A few weeks later in Big Pat’s home city of New Orleans, Surtain was on stage at the NFL Honors during Super Bowl week. His parents were seated next to him when he found out he won, and they had plenty of family on hand to celebrate afterward.
Michelle says her son prophesized it. “This was his second or third time going to that show, in different cities,” she says. “And the last one, he was like, ‘When I come back again, I wanna be called on the stage for an award.’ And the next one he went to, this year, he was Defensive Player of the Year.”
Success can lead to distractions. Surtain has found ways to stay grounded as the requests for his time have continued to increase. He loves visiting a new country every offseason, and this year he went to Japan to see the temples and Mt. Fuji. He took up golf. He spent time with Deuce and his longtime girlfriend, Kevia Higdon. He does work for his foundation, strengthening the roots he has put down in Denver.
Big goals remain, and in a division stacked with genius coaches and a conference full of star quarterbacks, the Broncos still have their own mountains to climb. But Surtain maintains his confidence as he checks off one more career goal after another. The Super Bowl remains atop the list. The Hall of Fame may be in reach, too. His accolades are piling up quickly.
“Seems like he just got there, but he’s going on his fifth year,” Big Pat says. “It goes by fast.” (After all, he’d know.)
Surtain wears his family name every time he takes the field—obviously on the back of his jersey but really all over his body. He has images of his father’s pro jerseys tattooed on his leg, along with one of his own. The word LEGACY runs down his right leg. He has SURTAINLY BLESSED in script across his two biceps.
His NFL story spans generations, as his career unfolds with new memories and parallel experiences in meaningful cities and stadiums across the league. From New Orleans to Miami to Kansas City to Denver. There is much more ink to spill as he continues writing Chapter II.
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