Editor's note: This story originally published Sept. 2, 2017

Close though they are in nearly every way, the football paths of brothers Rod and Jaylon Smith always had been separate.

Rod, three years older, was an all-state running back at Fort Wayne Indiana's Harding High. Jaylon starred at Fort Wayne's small Catholic school, Bishop Luers, earning the Butkus award as the nation's best high school linebacker.

Rod played at Ohio State; Jaylon at Notre Dame. Rod went undrafted; Jaylon was selected in the second round by the Cowboys.

Next Sunday, though, they will take the field at AT&T Stadium as Cowboys teammates when Dallas opens the 2017 regular season against the New York Giants.

"Oh, I can't wait to see them on the same field, same time, same team," says their mother, Sophia Woodson. "I might cry."

Sophia plans to be in the AT&T Stadium stands with her husband, Lane, as does Rod and Jaylon's father, Roger Smith, and his wife, Crystal.

For Roger, 49, this intersection of his sons' career in North Texas is extra-special. Though he grew up in Fort Wayne -- Bears, Packers and Lions country -- he's been a Cowboys fan since he was 5 and the team was quarterbacked by another Roger: Staubach.

"It's kind of surreal," he says. "All of it is a total blessing. For them to be on my favorite team? For them to both be there and have the opportunity to fulfill their dream together?

"I mean, as a dad, what more could you ask for?"

How unusual is it for brothers to make it to the NFL, let alone the same team?

According to calculations compiled by the NFL Players Association, only about 215 of 100,000, or roughly 0.2 percent, of high school seniors who play annually go on to NFL careers.

A March 2015 compilation by the Pro Football Hall of Fame listed 373 documented sets of brothers who played in the NFL, AFL or the 1940s All-America Football Conference.

Those brother combinations date to the 1920s and include the likes of Jim and Jack Thorpe and Red and Garland Grange.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame list cites 67 cases in which brothers played on the same team in the same season, including the Cowboys' Troy and Darren Hambrick in 2000 and 2001. The list, however, omits Akin and Remi Ayodele, who shared the field for seven Cowboys games in 2007.

Dallas Cowboys running back Rod Smith (45) and Dallas Cowboys outside linebacker Jaylon Smith (54) on a pass play during practice on the last day of training camp at The Star in Frisco on Tuesday, August 29, 2017. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News) (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

Although Rod and Jaylon Smith were much sought-after college recruits, each has had adversity. Jaylon's is well-known. In his final college game, the Jan. 1, 2016 Fiesta Bowl, he suffered knee ligament and nerve damage.

Originally projected as a top-five pick, he plummeted to the second round and had to sit out all of last season, his first with the Cowboys.

Rod Smith arrived at Ohio State two years before Urban Meyer and his staff took over. Primarily used as a backup to Ezekiel Elliott and on special teams, Smith finished his college career with 549 rushing yards. His time as a Buckeye was pockmarked by a missed team flight to the 2011 Gator Bowl, academic issues and, reportedly, a failed drug test.

Signed as a free agent by Seattle in 2015, Rod Smith was claimed off waivers by the Cowboys in October 2015 and has spent the past two seasons mostly playing special teams.

"Now, watching them run out together?" Roger Smith says. "I think I'll be more emotional and happy for them because I know the backstory of how they both are and what they both had to overcome.

"For them to be there together is big because I know there is no one who can push them more than they push each other."

High school foes

When the Cowboys hosted Indianapolis in a preseason game on Aug. 19, it was the first time Rod and Jaylon had been in an organized game as teammates, but it wasn't their first time playing in the same game.

During the 2009 Indiana Class 2A playoffs, freshman Jaylon helped Bishop Luers beat Rod's Harding team, 14-8. That was the first of four state title runs by Bishop Luers with Jaylon.

Jaylon had convinced his mother to let him attend private school Luers, in part to escape Rod's shadow, but also because he believed it would provide a better path to college.

Rod Smith is three years older than his brother Jaylon. The Smiths shared a room until they were teenagers. Now with the Cowboys, they were training camp roommates and plan to stay together on the road. (Courtesy of Roger Smith)

"That week of the game, they were talkin' and talkin', talkin' a lot of trash about who was going to win," recalls Sophia. "And afterward there was a photo in the paper where Jaylon tackled Rod.

"I was pulling for both of them," she says, adding with a laugh, "but I wanted Rod to win."

Her reasoning: Rod was a senior, about to close his career with conference career records of 6,625 yards and 66 touchdowns. And Harding was the underdog. Two years later, it would be converted to a magnet school.

"I had a good game; Jaylon had a good game," Rod recalls. "They had the better team. It was good all in all, but they won."

Roger Smith sat on Harding's side of the stadium in the first half, Luers' in the second.

Both Rod and Jaylon wore jersey No. 25 that night and throughout their high school careers. Jaylon wore No. 9 at Notre Dame. This season he is wearing No. 54. The digits add up to 9, but also represent the mirror-opposite of Rod's No. 45.

Roger and Sophia said they are having special-made jerseys to wear next Sunday, but said they prefer to keep the specifics a surprise.

"I'm pretty sure they can get Jaylon's jersey easier," Rod said with a smile. "It doesn't matter to me. They're going to be yelling our name at the same time."

Devastating injury

During their sons' college years, Roger and Sophia alternated attending Ohio State and Notre Dame games.

Both, however, were in the University of Phoenix stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on Jan. 1, 2016, for what most of the college football world already figured would be Jaylon's last game. Though only a junior, he had won college football's Butkus Award and was a projected high draft pick.

Rod was with the Cowboys, preparing for the 2015 season finale against Washington. Seven minutes into the Fiesta Bowl game against Ohio State, Jaylon went down. He pounded the turf with one hand and then covered his face in agony.

"I just knew, 'OK, I need to get down there,'" Sophia says.

She convinced a security guard to allow her down to the field level. As she hurried through the concrete corridor toward the locker room, the cart carrying Jaylon initially passed her.

"They stopped and backed up and let me get on with him. I hugged him," she recalls, her voice cracking. "Yeah, I remember that. That was a very emotional moment for both of us."

Rather than wait for his teammates in the locker room, Jaylon insisted on returning to the field to help "coach" his replacement through the rest of the game. First, though, he received a visit from his father in the locker room.

"You're OK. You'll get through this," Roger said that day. He later flew with Jaylon for the surgery, which was performed by Cowboys surgeon Dan Cooper.

"We just said a prayer, 'We'll let God handle it,'" Roger Smith recalls. "All you can do is what you can control.

"He put 150 percent into his recovery, believing in the process but also believing in himself. Basically it's just worked out like God ordained for it to work."

Dallas Cowboys defensive end Taco Charlton (L-R, beginning with 2nd from left), Dallas Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith and Dallas Cowboys Rod Smith arrival at Naval Air Station Point Mugu in Point Mugu, California on Saturday, July 22, 2017. Dallas Cowboys training camp begins on Monday. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News) (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

While Jaylon's return to the field is one of the Cowboys' biggest 2017 season stories, Rod has established himself as one of the team's best special teams performers and has rushed the ball effectively during the preseason.

Depending on the result of Elliott's suspension appeal, Rod might get more time at running back this season than most imagined.

And unlike most NFL brother combos of recent years -- the Mannings, Bennetts, Celeks, Longs, Watts, to name a few -- the Smiths cherish the chance to be teammates for the first time.

They roomed together during training camp in Oxnard and will be road roommates this season. Rod, admittedly, is the more sloppy of the two.

"I wouldn't rather have any other roommate than my big brother," Jaylon said. "I'm his number one fan. Just to have this opportunity to be able to play together, it's something we dreamt of.

"We understood it was going to be possible when Jerry [Jones] called me that night [of the draft], but for it to really happen, it's a great feeling."