CHARLOTTE — Joyce Goodwin could hear the racket in the back of the house. How could she not?
Her sons, Harold and Jonathan, were playing basketball on a mini-hoop attached to a closet door in their home in Hopkins, S.C. To even things up to account for the five-year age difference, Harold would play from his knees to give Little Jonathan a chance. But they were still large, and still growing into the kind of size that would carry them to scholarships at the University of Michigan to play offensive line when they were older.
"We were just basically banging it out, so he might have run into a wall or two growing up," Harold said with a laugh. "Maybe, maybe he accidentally ran into a wall."
"Probably some holes in the wall, a torn-up closet door," Jonathan acknowledged with a nod.
"I knew something was going on back there," Joyce said. "But they were good boys."
Mom always kept a close eye on her sons, through a lot of years and tears and all-night drives. So this spring, this is the good part. She's retired and able to enjoy her family fully. And the fact that her boys are in the same place at the same time makes it that much sweeter.
Harold is in his second year as the Panthers run game coordinator, an easy enough ride down I-77 that he's able to make it to see her far more often than when he coached in Tampa Bay or any of his other four NFL stops. Jonathan is here as a coaching intern with the Panthers, as part of the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship.
So, after years of being opponents from NFL games to those home-remodeling indoor basketball games, they're teammates again.
"I'm so excited about them being in the same place," Joyce said. "It's been a long time."
For the Panthers, adding Jonathan as part of the Walsh program made all the sense in the world. A former Pro Bowl center who played 13 years and 195 games with the Jets, Saints, and 49ers, he steps into a void in the coaching staff and adds to a group the Panthers want to be a foundation.
When the Panthers were building out the offensive line with both staff and players last year, they had Keli'i Kekuewa working with the centers, while Harold had the guards, and offensive line coach Joe Gilbert worked with the tackles. Kekuewa got a promotion to go with the Jaguars this offseason, so the Panthers found a guy who fit right in to help out through the spring and training camp.
Harold's been coaching in the NFL since 2004, long enough to be fairly described as grizzled. And he has the kind of gravity to have earned the assistant head coach title for two teams, which speaks to the respect he's earned in a huddle full of football players and coaches. He has skins on the wall, as they say in the business, and rings on his fingers.
Meanwhile, Jonathan is one year into his coaching career, spending last year with the Chargers. But he wanted to come home for a lot of reasons, and he already had a house in Waxhaw, N.C., so this was a good fit.
The fact that he gets to work with his big brother just adds a layer to it.
"Make sure you mention I'm the big brother," Harold says.
It's pretty clear, not just for the competitiveness that might have damaged some sheet rock back in the day. But also because as the big brother, Harold was also the one to protect his little brother, and when you're five years older and as large as he was, that was usually a sufficient deterrent to anyone who wanted to give Jonathan any problems.
Usually.
"I tell my boys this story all the time," Jonathan began. "Our neighbor was around Harold's age, maybe a little bit older, but he's a good friend of ours. But there was one instance where he did something to me, and Harold kind of put him into the wall, knocked a hole in the wall in my bedroom, and we covered it up with a poster.
"I'm sure it probably frustrated my mom, but you know, at the end of the day, I guess it made us better."
It definitely made them closer, and as Jonathan is early in his own coaching journey, he's grateful to be here alongside a veteran in Harold — nearly as much as Joyce is grateful having them nearby. She was smart enough to know there was probably something going on underneath that slightly rumpled Michael Jordan poster in Jonathan's room, but she also saw the bond develop between them. The boys were young when she and their father divorced, which forced them even closer together.
"I think Harold was more of the father figure," Joyce said. "So they were close, he kind of looked after him, I would think, tried to be the father-figure at a young age. You know, being a single parent, I think Jonathan was like 4 years old when I got divorced, so they were close-knit. I'm a very proud parent because of being divorced and them doing so well in life, finishing school and going on with their careers. They were good kids. A lot of love. They were good sons.
"A lot of love. We had a great relationship with each other. They were mama's boys, I don't know how else to say it."
They still are, so Jonathan took great delight in surprising his mom with a FaceTime call and an update earlier this offseason.
She couldn't figure out why he kept holding his head at a weird angle and fiddling with his hat, though.
"Mom, I've got some news for you," he said, tipping the bill down to show her the Panthers logo, the one he's been wearing throughout OTAs and minicamp, and will be wearing when training camp starts in less than two weeks.
"That made me so happy," she said.
It made him happy, too.
When his playing career was over, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do, but through their University of Michigan connection with Jim Harbaugh, he found a spot on the Chargers staff. That allowed the brothers to meet up in the pregame before the Week 2 game last year, and for Jonathan to leave with a 26-3 win and temporary bragging rights. It was the fourth time they had met in the regular season since the years when Harold's coaching jobs coincided with Jonathan's playing career.
Jonathan's Saints beat Harold's Steelers in 2010, Jonathan's 49ers beat Harold's Steelers in 2011, and Jonathan's 49ers beat Harold's Cardinals in 2013.
"I'm probably like 15-2 if you count the preseason," Jonathan cracked.
Of course, Harold's the big brother again in the playoffs, as his Bears team beat Jonathan's Saints in the 2006 NFC Championship Game, so there's that.
"I might have all the wins," Harold replied when asked if they kept score.
But even while they were competing, the family was always keeping eyes on each other.
When Harold went to Michigan, that meant their mom had to make some tough choices. But as close as they were, it really was no choice at all.
Mom would load up her old Puegot, or occasionally rent a car and ride with relatives, and make those long rides north to see all of their games.
She got off from her job at the Square D plant in Hopkins (where she worked for 38 years) at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday, and drove through the night to get to Ann Arbor. That's a hard 11-or-12-hour drive if there's no construction, but mom wasn't going to be deterred, not even for noon kickoffs that gave her just a few hours to spare to rest or stop to get something to eat.
"A lot of all-night drives," she said. "A lot of driving in the dark. But it was all worth it."
There were even more trips in the years to come, when Jonathan transferred from Ohio University to Michigan after his freshman year. Harold was gone by then, having spent his first three post-college years as a graduate assistant with the Wolverines, where he transitioned from playing alongside guys such as future All-Pro tackle Jon Runyan to coaching players like future Hall of Famer Steve Hutchinson. But before his little brother could get to Michigan, Harold was off on a coaching journey that had stops at Eastern Michigan and Central Michigan before he got to the NFL in 2004 as an assistant offensive line coach with the Bears.
Harold has a couple of Super Bowl rings as a coach — one with the Steelers, one with the Buccaneers — another edge he has over little brother. Jonathan has one ring from his time with the Saints, and he also made it to another Super Bowl with the San Francisco (when big brother John Harbaugh's Ravens beat little brother Jim's 49ers).
For the Goodwins, sports were always their context, from a basketball hoop in the driveway to seeing their mother and father play in rec softball leagues when they were kids. That leads to an innate competitiveness.
And his mom was right; Harold has always been supportive of his little brother. But he's also not going to let him forget the birth order, either.
"Super-competitive," Harold said. "We were always outside. So we just kind of grew up to be outside and play sports, whether it's inside or outside, basketball or baseball or whatever.
"I mean, I'm the big brother. I've got to win and dominate at all times. We had a basketball hoop out in the driveway, so any time we played it was blood and guts, so we had to go for it and try to get the dub."
They laugh about this kind of stuff now, but Harold also acknowledges the playing career his little brother had, and how that helps their current situation with the Panthers.
"Just from the coaching standpoint, I got an advantage because I've seen it from a lot of different avenues as far as teams I've been on and learned from a lot of different people, but he has the advantage as a player because obviously he played 13 years in the league," Harold said. "He was able to physically do it, but from a coaching standpoint, I got him right now. He's green as they would say in the coaching profession.
"But I told the guys, especially the centers in the room, to soak up the knowledge. You've got a guy who played 13 years, been in two Super Bowls, won one, and he's played a high level, made a Pro Bowl. He's got a lot of skin in the game as far as playing position. So for those guys to turn around and look at somebody that actually played in the NFL for a long time at a high level with Drew Brees and Alex Smith, he's learned things from them that he can share with them as far as how a center and a quarterback see the game from that lens. It's good for everybody."
And as Jonathan considers a future in coaching, he accepts he's behind his big brother again, and remains grateful to be here in whatever capacity.
"We've both been in this industry for a while, so you know it's a little bit surreal to be around your big brother, the guy you grew up looking up to," Jonathan said. "And you know it makes things easier for my mom and the rest of my family, it's definitely a good feeling to know now she doesn't have to root for two teams, and one of them being across the country. So it's definitely been a good experience and something I hope could continue.
"It's something that means a lot and I definitely cherish it, that doesn't happen too often in this business where you get those opportunities. So I'm definitely grateful and thankful for it. Like I said, I'm forever grateful for Jim Harbaugh and the Chargers, and now I'm forever grateful to Dave (Canales), Mr. Tepper, and Dan Morgan for being here."
He's not the only one.
Jonathan's wife is still packing up the furniture in California and getting the rest of the family here, which means Joyce still has more FaceTime calls with her granddaughter than she might prefer.
"I think she FaceTimes my daughter every day," Jonathan said of his mom.
Harold joked that "Thanksgiving's going to be a lot easier," but he also knows how much it means to his mother, after all those years of sacrificing for her boys, working all week and then driving all night, and putting all her energy into raising two sons.
"She's super proud," Harold says. "She tells us how proud she is all the time, the way we've turned out in life, and the things we've been able to do and accomplish. So she's super happy, super grateful, and she just, she feels like she's been blessed."
That's clear in even a short conversation with Joyce Goodwin. She could talk all day about her boys, but she also reserves the right to be a little emotional as well.
So now that they're in the same place at the same time, and wearing the same logo, the words come softly when she's asked what it's like to imagine seeing them coaching the same team — and just being together again.
"It's just a blessing," she replied. "I can't wait to get into the stadium and see them together. It just means so much to all of us."
