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In a league that’s seen an explosion of facial hair in recent years, the Ohio-born brothers are two of the finest examples of groomedness on the gridiron—and both have partnered with Old Spice to launch the brand’s first-ever beard grooming lineup. But they took very different routes to get their beard hair to where it is today.

Jay HannaJay Hanna
Jason made a name for himself first, turning heads with a massive beard shortly after he joined the Philadelphia Eagles out of college nine years ago. Though there’s ample manliness in his current look, he’s tamed the Viking excesses of those early days. “It’s not really feasible to have a rough-type beard like that, but I was a rookie in the beard game back then,” admits Jason. No longer a rookie, he’s made Old Spice’s new beard collection part of his post-workout grooming routine. “Now I put products in it to make sure it’s clean and kempt. The texture is better after using things like beard oil and beard balm—it definitely makes a big difference.”

Travis, meanwhile, has taken a more experimental route with facial hair than his older brother has. (The same goes for his end-zone dance moves, but that’s another story.) The goatee, the mustache, the shadow beard—he’s test-run all of them. The star tight end didn’t model his current, fulsome facial hair on anyone in particular, but based on his brother’s handiwork and some old photos of his father in full-beard mode, he felt pretty sure it would be up to snuff.

He also had his grooming toolkit lined up in advance. “I use the Old Spice Beard Wash. That’s what made me grow it out, actually, knowing I had something that would keep my beard moisturized and not itching.”

The brothers have different maintenance routines. Jason sees his Philadelphia barber every two or three weeks. Otherwise, he says, “anything from eating corn [on the cob] to drinking liquid out of a glass becomes a struggle.” His brother, he adds, has always kept on top of his personal style, with “everything incredibly meticulously planned out, as far as how he looks.” No surprise, then, that Travis tightens up his facial hair at least once a week.

Jay HannaJay Hanna
“I’m out here to have the best beard possible, and I’ve been getting nothing but compliments,” Travis notes. He’s encouraging other athletes to grow theirs out, too—including his QB. (Travis was disappointed with the early results, and told him so.) “Being able to grow a beard, I think it’s my duty to make it look good.”

In the NFL, at least, it’s been a growth market for beards. The league’s old clean-shaven standards are a thing of the past. “I think it’s a long time coming. I don’t understand why it was ever a problem, to tell you the truth,” Jason says. “Some guys, I look at them, I’m kind of wondering why they don’t have a beard. You can see they’d have a great one, that they could be doing so much better.”

“Even if guys don’t admit it, we definitely check out other guys’ beards,” he adds. “I enjoy compliments from guys more than from girls. If a guy has a beard, he knows what he’s talking about.”

Like anything at the highest levels of contact sport, though, it can be male bonding one moment, rivalry another. For Travis, game face right now involves a thick carpeting of kempt, healthy man-hair. “Whenever you see a nice beard, you kind of think, ‘That’s a manly man.’ So, yeah, I think a beard definitely helps the game face a lot.”