Our first look at Kaiir Elam's number 24 Bills jersey came the day after he was selected 23rd overall.
Kaiir wasn't in it.
His younger brother Aydan was.
"We were in the locker room taking pictures with my jersey, my family and I," Elam remembers. "I think he asked one of the equipment guys 'Can I wear it?' and they said yeah. He wore it even before I did. It's amazing how much kids absorb and want to be just like the older sibling."
That picture was just a snapshot of the bond between the two, one that now is seen on Kaiir's Twitter and Instagram pages.
"The reason I have him as my profile picture is because he tries to follow everything I do in my footsteps," Elam said. "We don't live together anymore, but my mom always sends me videos of him trying to mimic things that I do. It just puts an added motivation to my bag just to make sure that everything I do, he's watching, so I can't make any false steps, any mistakes. I don't have room for error because I don't want him feeling anything I do wrong is okay."
Close sibling relationships aren't uncommon.
What makes Kaiir and Aydan unique is their 10-year age gap, with older brother 21 and younger 11.
But that doesn't mean they aren't the same.
"He was always super duper active," Elam said. "He's kind of the opposite of what I was, but I see a lot in him when it comes to being competitive, being a kid that's just striving to be the best on the field or court or whatever he's doing. When he was a lot smaller, he always had that little fire in him. He's always trying to one-up me, even when he was 4, 5 years old. Whatever I'd do he'd have to do it better."
And the distance between Buffalo and Florida hasn't affected their relationship as you might think.
"If anything it's gotten a lot stronger," Elam said. "He calls me every day after practice. Every day when I go home after his practice. Right now he's playing tackle football for his middle school. So he calls me every day and tells me how his day was or ask me what happened last game. Always just calling me to see what I'm doing. So I think it's gotten a lot stronger."
Aydan is just beginning his football path, but the Elam family as a whole has been on it at the highest level for a while.
Dad Abram and uncle Matt each had careers in the NFL.
Now Kaiir follows in their footsteps and is ready to help Aydan navigate whether he wants to as well.
"I just want him to be himself," Elam explained. "I just want him to branch out. My parents never pushed me to play football. If anything they pushed me the opposite to do something else. But I was always around it and always just wanted it so much more because I wasn't allowed to play it and wasn't allowed to actually be involved with it. So when I got my opportunity, I wasn't as good, but I was always work, work, work, work. For him, I'd say just to be his own person. I want him to go try and be a doctor. Go try and be a lawyer, an astronaut. Something else. But if he falls in love with football, I just don't want him to try and be better than me. Just be the best Aydan he can be."
Another round of Kaiir Elam sharing brotherly advice with the younger Aydan.
Just like he shared his first Bills jersey.