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NFL star Christian McCaffrey has three brothers: Max, Luke, and Dylan

The boys all grew up playing football with their dad and three-time Super Bowl champion Ed McCaffrey

Luke now plays for the Washington Commanders

Christian McCaffrey isn't the only NFL star in his family.

Not only was the San Francisco 49ers running back raised by three-time Super Bowl champion Ed McCaffrey, but his brother, Luke, is the latest member of the family to go pro after getting drafted to the Washington Commanders in 2024. He now plays as a wide receiver for the team.

Christian and Luke's other brothers, Dylan and Max, are also very active in the football world. Dylan played quarterback for the University of Michigan Wolverines before transferring to the University of Northern Colorado. Max is a former wide receiver who played college football for the Duke Blue Devils and signed with the Oakland Raiders as an undrafted free agent in 2016. He is currently an offensive assistant for the Miami Dolphins.

Christian has reflected on how he and his brothers felt the effects of their father's legacy when they were younger.

“Growing up I was Ed's kid, we were always Ed's sons and so in a way, that was an advantage for us because we got to experience a little bit of that already,” Christian told NBC Sports in September 2023. “I think myself and three of my brothers, we all kind of wanted to branch off and create our own name.”

Now that they're getting older, the brothers come together to support each other. When Christian married Olivia Culpo on June 29, 2024, Luke, Dylan and Max served as groomsmen.

Here’s everything to know about Christian McCaffrey's brothers: Max, Dylan and Luke.

Maxwell James — or Max as he is more affectionately known — is the eldest of Ed and Lisa McCaffrey’s four children. He was born in Castle Rock, Colo., on May 17, 1994.

The couple welcomed their second child, Christian Jackson, on June 7, 1996. Dylan followed almost three years later, on March 25, 1999. Luke, who was born on April 2, 2001, is the youngest of the bunch.

The McCaffrey brothers were molded into formidable football players by their father, Ed, a Super Bowl champion. The Pennsylvania-born athlete made his mark in college football at Stanford University. His exceptional performance earned him a spot in the All-Pac-10 Conference and first-team All-America honors.

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Ed was the New York Giants' third-round pick (83rd overall) in the 1991 NFL Draft. Throughout his 13-year career, he was selected to the Pro Bowl in 1998 and won three Super Bowl rings. Before his illustrious football career, Ed excelled at high school basketball, even leading his team to two state titles in 1984 and 1986.

Lisa played women's soccer at Stanford for three seasons. She also excelled at tennis and track. While Christian, Luke, Dylan and Max may have gotten their football acumen from their dad, they attribute their exceptional athletic abilities to Lisa.

“I mean, if you want to look at genes alone, my mom ran, I think, a 4.5 40-yard dash pregnant with my brother,” Luke joked in a May 2024 interview for the Washington Commanders website. “So that's kind of always our answer when someone asks us, '’Where'd you get your athleticism from?’ It's immediate, all of us will answer ‘our mom.’ ”

For Lisa, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. In the 1950s, her father, Dave Sime, was widely believed to have been the fastest man in the world, per Newsweek. While a student at Duke, Sime was named to the All-American baseball and track teams. At the 1960 Rome Olympics, he ran the 100-meter dash and took home silver.

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All four McCaffrey brothers attended Valor Christian High School, each winning a state title. But Luke had the experience of being coached by their father. Ed took over the reins of the football team following the 2017 season and the duo won a state championship the following year. Despite their successful coach-athlete relationship, Ed recognized the challenge his hiring presented for Luke.

“I can’t tell you, as a coach, how hard it is to have to take car rides home with your son, who plays for you, and corrects all of the mistakes you make,” Ed joked in an interview with The Denver Post in December 2018. “Any time I made a bad call at practice or in a game — the pressure it put on me! I couldn’t get away from it. Football, football, football."

He continued, “But I’m so proud of Luke, as a son obviously, but he was a leader for Valor football ... he was the first one to every practice and the last one to leave.”

In 2024, he was drafted to the Washington Commanders after switching positions to receiver from quarterback.

“One of the big things I said when I switched positions to myself is I just want to be a football player,” Luke told The New York Times' The Athletic in October 2025. “At quarterback, you’re not really a football player through and through. You’re more of a scientist. But a big thing for me was just being able to go run, be able to hit people, be able to do all that stuff that a football player does.”

Dylan started playing college football at Michigan under Jim Harbaugh but left the team amid the COVID-19 pandemic to enter the transfer portal.

The former quarterback eventually transferred to the University of Northern Colorado, where he was coached by his dad Ed.

The McCaffrey family had another major engagement in 2023. On June 17, 2023, Max proposed to Kathleen Messier in Hilton Head, S.C.

According to the University of Northern Colorado website, Messier joined the Northern Colorado Football staff as the director of operations in July 2021. Max also spent three seasons on staff at the University of Northern Colorado from 2020 to 2022.

Both Max and Messier are also alums of Duke University — she graduated with an economics degree in 2015 and he graduated a year later with a degree in psychology.