Nov. 26—New Mexico linebacker Jaxton Eck will make a play — a safety, a sack, a timely tackle — and head coach Jason Eck will hear the question in a postgame press conference.
Was that more of a proud coach moment, it usually goes, or a proud dad moment?
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe question has been a constant because, well, there's a lot to be proud of. On the field, Jaxton Eck is a near-lock for All-Mountain West honors, the heartbeat of a defense that's peaking at the right time. His 115 total tackles are 10th nationally, second in the Mountain West. Not bad for a lightly recruited Division II prospect.
Off the field? Jaxton's success is the cherry on top of a damn good year for the Eck family. After years of mediocre to bad football at UNM, Jason has done the unthinkable: The Lobos are 8-3 and poised for their biggest game in years when they host San Diego State on Friday. Win that, and UNM might just play for a Mountain West title.
No football family has become quite so beloved in Albuquerque so quickly, so easily. For the last few months, a dream for a father, mother, son and siblings has played out in front of thousands. Those closest have to remind themselves it isn't one.
"Every time I go to a game," says Kimberly Eck, Jaxton's mother and Jason's wife, "I literally pinch myself."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt almost never happened.
That's where Jaxton's story starts.
***
At the core of a life spent competing, there was a game. Jason wasn't there — "I was working," he said — but he remembers Jaxton playing tackle football in Hampton, Virginia. One day, he came to the sideline with a nasty cut. Seeing her son bleeding and crying, Kimberly went to check on him.
"(She) thought it was because of the injury," Jason remembered, "but he wanted to go back in. They were making him come out and he wanted to go back in and play."
Kimberly was there. She laughs at a memory true in concept, if not context.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"It's so funny," she says today, "because you can tell how busy my husband is."
It actually wasn't a football game, or a cut. Jaxton got a bad nosebleed during a soccer game as a kindergartner. The point, however, stood: "Everyone's like, 'oh my gosh, is he OK?'" Kimberly said. "He was like, crying and kinda mad.
"I was like, no, he just wants to get back in the game."
Few stories describe Jaxton's childhood as well. Hustling through some of the leaner years of his career, Jason wasn't always around, carving a résumé through the backroads of college football. The family moved seven times from Jaxton's birth to high school. Kimberly had to get creative, sometimes petitioning youth sports organizers to let Jaxton play up a couple years with his older brother, Quentin.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"I'm like, 'look my husband's gone a lot and I'm by myself, so I'd rather watch both my kids at once,'" she said.
But where that dynamic might drive some kids away from football, Jaxton had no resentment for his dad's work. A young quarterback, running back, defensive tackle and linebacker, Jaxton watched endless Colt McCoy highlights as a kid. Kimberly remembers him running around with little footballs at Winona State games, a giddy kid bouncing up and down the sideline.
"His first year of Sunday school, he wrote — I still have the paper — 'Thank you God for ______,'" Kimberly said, "and with his little crayon, he drew a football."
At the same time, the kid that cried when he was taken out of a soccer game grew only more competitive. Jason nurtured that, tying socks to his sons' ankles, Jaxton and Quentin wrestling to get the other's sock off. Playing football in the living room one day, Jaxton dove and took a cabinet to the face.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"Nose was gushing blood," he remembered. "But I just always loved competing."
It all added up. By the time Jaxton was in eighth grade, Jason thought he could be a college player, routinely giving a member of South Dakota State's film staff $20 to go off and film his son's games. "I'd tell the (film) director, 'you're down one guy today,'" he chuckled.
Jaxton? He wasn't always sure.
"I was a solid player for South Dakota. I was a good player on our team," he says. "But I didn't think, 'oh, I could be a really good football player,' because I was a little undersized."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat self-perception started to change when he was a freshman at Brookings High School in South Dakota. Jaxton had a good year as a freshman, and was moved up to varsity. A promising basketball player, that season was enough of a push for him to focus more on football.
Then COVID hit. Limited to practice only, South Dakota State didn't play that fall. Jason was able to watch his son's entire sophomore season, a wholly unusual and exciting experience for both son and wife. Those nights in the stands at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium piled up on each other. The wheels started to turn.
"That year," Jason said, "got me thinking about being a head coach."
The skinny: Jason didn't think Jaxton would get recruited at South Dakota State. Defensive coordinator Jimmy Rogers prioritized speed above all, and if Jaxton wasn't out-and-out slow, he didn't quite fit that mold. Nor would Jason, the offensive coordinator, have much of a say in who Rogers may or may not recruit.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs a head coach of his own program? Well, maybe that wouldn't be a problem. And Jason thought Jaxton was good enough, would be good enough to play. When he was hired as a first-time head coach at Idaho in December 2021, that was part of the calculus.
The only catch?
Jaxton didn't necessarily want that.
Think about it: How many coach's kids outplay that label? How many overcome the name on the back of their jersey? For every Doug and Greg McDermott combo, there are a legion of little league fathers giving their little league sons reps over more deserving players.
Or, at least there's that perception. Jaxton didn't want to fight it.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"I didn't want all the work I had done to get invalidated," he said, "by just playing for him."
At the end of Jaxton's junior year at Brookings, Jason was already off and trying to launch Idaho into respectability. Jaxton had a handful of Division II offers by then. Sioux Falls. Northern State. That summer, he fractured his hip before participating in a prospect camp at South Dakota State. He could barely move.
"Played well enough," he shrugged. A few more Division II offers came his way, but nothing from the FCS ranks. Jason could tell he didn't want Idaho to be the only FCS school to recruit him, so he gave him the coaches' Rolodex and got him to work.
"I said, 'hey, here's all these guys. Why don't you send out your highlights to every FCS coach out there, and see what comes back,'" Jason said.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA few weeks into his senior year, Jaxton got an additional FCS offer from Incarnate Word. Then and only then could Jaxton seriously consider his Idaho offer. When he took his official visit, he didn't fuss over facilities or need a big tour. All he needed was a meeting with defensive coordinator Rob Aurich.
"I wanted to feel like he wanted me, too," Jaxton said. "(That) it wasn't just like he felt he had to take me."
On Oct. 26, 2022, Jaxton made it official: He'd return to his birthplace, and be a Vandal. He told The Brookings Register that he chose Idaho due to proximity to family and the opportunity "to play for a winning program that's going in the right direction.
"Idaho," he added, "just seemed like the right fit for me."
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"It was," Jason remembers, "kind of concerning."
From 2013-21, Idaho was coached by Paul Petrino, whose son played quarterback for the Vandals. In talking to some boosters, it didn't take Jason long to realize that wasn't all too popular among the Vandal faithful. Fair or not, fans grumbled about the father-son tandem.
And here was Jason, walking into his first head coaching job with a son — well, maybe — on the way to anchor the defense.
"Boosters would ask me the first time I met them, 'you don't have a son that plays quarterback?'" Jason chuckled. "I think they kind of meant it as a joke, but there definitely was like, a vibe of a coach before playing the son he probably shouldn't have been playing, and some nepotism."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementJaxton picked up on that quickly. He would listen to an Idaho sports podcast — "I like listening when they talk about my dad," he said — and the Petrinos would come up. Not in a positive way, either. "I was like, 'dang, it's already a situation where they have a certain feeling about coach's kids,'" he remembered.
Jason at least gained some "political capital" with those same boosters by winning seven games in his first year. But by the time Jaxton arrived early for spring practice, there was already some murmuring among the players.
Can this kid really play?
"We were a little bit, like, intimidated," UNM and former Idaho quarterback Jack Layne said. "And probably a little bit annoyed ... You know, 'he's just here because of his last name — like he's taking a scholarship.'"
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementEvery cliché you've ever heard, Jaxton lived it his first semester at Idaho. He was first to the weight room. First to meetings. Last out of the facility. If anything, he was trying to prove his placement more to himself than any teammate, especially on scholarship.
"I didn't want anyone to question that — how much it meant to me," Jaxton said.
At Idaho, the Kibbie Dome is used for indoor track and field, so there's no indoor field for football players in the winter. Layne and his brother, Dylan, would grind through fieldwork sessions together in those months, braving blistering cold and snow skiffs. "That's just what we've been doing since high school," Layne said.
One day, Jaxton came out with them. Then he came out again. And again.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"I was like, damn, this kid really likes it," Layne said.
It showed on the field. Jaxton started 12 games as a freshman, making 37 tackles as Idaho won nine games. As a sophomore, he was named first-team All-Big Sky with a whopping 134 tackles to his name. Idaho won 10 games. It wasn't a question he belonged.
Frankly it might've been a question of if he should go somewhere else. When Jason was hired at New Mexico, Jaxton entered the portal and got offers from North Carolina State, Michigan State and Stanford. It was not a foregone conclusion that he'd end up at UNM.
When he did, he had to find a way to get to work. New teammates might think like the old ones.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementCan this kid really play?
What made it frustrating, Jaxton says, was that he was on the mend. He got hip surgery after Idaho's season ended and had to sit out spring practice in Albuquerque. On the field, he occupied an awkward spot, trying to coach but also trying not overstep his boundaries.
Off the field, he went to new lengths. UNM has a set of stationary wind bikes for players to pedal with their hands and feet. In the midst of that frustrating spring, Jaxton got in a race of sorts with another player — he won't say who — and nearly won it.
"He did it without using his legs — because he had the hip surgery," Jason said. "And he was going right with the guy who was using his legs. He lost, but it was pretty close."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt's been a dream since, one that was a few breaks away from never taking hold. Jaxton says now that he doesn't worry about any coach's kid taunts. At the same time, he admits he probably would've gone Division II if he didn't get that Incarnate Word offer. The perception he wanted to escape would've never turned into the "blessing" of time spent with Jason.
"I see him more now, in probably these last three years, than I did really growing up for the majority of my life," Jaxton said.
In turn, Jason admits that if Jaxton didn't have that love for the game?
Maybe none of this would've happened.
"I kind of think sometimes," Jason said, "say he had not been a football player. I don't know if I'd be a head coach."
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