Nick Easley is Iowa’s top returning receiver. After catching 51 passes for 530 yards and 4 touchdowns in his début season with the Hawkeyes in 2017, he has been a fundamental force and consistent leader for Iowa in his final season.

And he has had his brother by his side through it all.

In the first two games, Nick Easley battled injuries and only managed 1 catch for 15 yards, but the Northern Iowa game was different.

When the Hawkeyes took on the Panthers on Sept. 15, Matt Easley didn’t wear the purple and gold of his former squad. Despite tailgating with fellow former Panther specialists, Matt Easley wore his brother’s blackout jersey from Iowa’s 55-24 upset of Ohio State in 2017.

Nick Easley responded to the support by catching a career-high 10 passes for 105 yards and a touchdown in a 38-14 beatdown of his brother’s former team.

That his brother would put aside his previous allegiance to support him means a lot to the younger Easley.

“It’s pretty cool,” he said. “He played there, so obviously, he has pride in that. Obviously, he wants them to win, but I think on [Sept. 15] he was 100 percent for me. That was pretty cool to see that even though I was playing against his alma mater, his former school, he was still all in for the Hawks.”

The support Nick Easley now receives in bulk was reciprocated a long time before he even stepped foot on the campus of Iowa Western, where he played before he received a walk-on offer from Iowa.

Nick Easley could always be found in games with his older brother and his friends. The challenge of playing with those older, bigger, and stronger than him forced him to be aggressive.

“[Matt] would always get mad at me because I was always trying to compete in everything we did,” Nick Easley said. “If it was just getting in the back door, I would race him to it or something stupid. But I think that’s definitely where I learned to get my competitive edge from.”

Matt Easley was a good high-school kicker at Newton before packing his bags for Cedar Falls. A self-driven individual, he researched opportunities to attend camps and improve his game without being prompted.

After his father agreed to drive him to the camps, the Easleys hit the road. Sometimes, they let the families of campers step on the field, so Nick Easley tried his hand at kicking. And he was good.

“The difference between us was that I was a pretty good high-school kicker and he was a pretty good high-school kicker, but he was also an amazing athlete, and I was not,” Matt Easley said. “He actually had a ridiculously strong leg, and for a long time, we thought that his college football path would be as a kicker.”

Instead, Nick Easley has become the top wide receiver on a program known for turning lightly recruited players into NFL prospects. And his family is behind him all the way.

While John Easley and Alison Lemke, Matt and Nick’s parents, didn’t pressure them to pursue camps, they played a big role.

John Easley said his sons are self-directed, but that didn’t stop him from being an important part of their development.

He shagged kicks and threw routes, but Nick Easley took control of his own game from an early age.

When Nick Easley was in fourth grade, he started asking his dad to throw him passes every night, John Easley said. The duo had about nine routes at short, medium, and long distances they ran through, and Nick  kept track of how many he caught and how many he dropped.

For every pass he didn’t secure, Nick Easley forced himself to run a sprint across that family’s yard — around 100 yards.

“I’m like, ‘Nick, you don’t have to do that,’ ” John Easley said. “He’s like, ‘I have to catch every ball, I can catch every ball, so I got to do this …’ That’s to me the indicator that he was destined to do something great.”