A.J. Brown listened to the ovation during pregame warmups of his first NFL game. The Titans were playing the Browns to open the 2019 season, and Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry ran onto the field for Beckham’s anticipated Cleveland debut.
Brown, a rookie who had been drafted in the second round that year, didn’t gawk at the high-profile receivers drawing the applause. He made a pledge to himself.
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“They’re coming to see me, not them,” Brown remembered thinking during a conversation with The Athletic last week.
That might seem audacious against a pair of receivers with seven Pro Bowls between them at that point, but if you think it’s bold, you also don’t know much about Brown.
The player who had the most receiving yards that day? It wasn’t Beckham. It wasn’t Landry. It was the rookie making his NFL debut.
“And it went from there,” Brown said.
There are some players who see a spotlight and scurry in the other direction. And then there’s Brown, who doesn’t simply embrace the big stage. It’s a big stage because he’s on it.
Brown will play against his former team Sunday when the Titans visit Philadelphia. He was traded in a draft-night deal that was far from the preferred outcome for the Titans or Brown. Stalled contract negotiations prompted Tennessee to trade the now-25-year-old, even though he said he wanted to retire with the Titans. Mike Vrabel said Brown would remain with the team as long as he was the coach.
The Eagles surrendered a first- and third-round pick and signed the 2020 Pro Bowler to a $100 million contract.
There were days after the trade when Brown acknowledged he had “mixed emotions.” He’s since found peace with the transaction and become one of the foundational players on a 10-1 team. He’s top 10 in the NFL in receiving yards and has twice as many touchdown receptions as all of Tennessee’s wide receivers combined. He’s also catching passes from one of his closest friends — Jalen Hurts is his daughter’s godfather — and has positioned his family for generational wealth.
By being traded to the Eagles, A.J. Brown has had the chance to catch touchdown passes from one of his closest friends. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)“For me, personally, I feel like I’ve won,” Brown said. “I’ve changed my family’s life forever. That’s the goal. Especially growing up where I’m from. Of course, I want to do great and accomplish all the great things. But that’s the reason why we play the game.”
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Based on contract, production and status, Brown is now in the conversation among the NFL’s top receivers. He sat by his locker last week and nodded to T-shirts that said “Unguardable.” He pointed to a sign hanging above his locker that reads “Always Open.”
“The sign is bold, very bold,” Brown said. “But you gotta believe it.”
It’s the personality of someone who can see established Pro Bowlers on the other sideline and tell himself the fans are there to watch him. It’s someone who’s willing to go to his town’s rival college, to finagle a trade to become one of the NFL’s highest-paid receivers, and who has never found a stage he doesn’t think he can handle.
“I don’t think he thinks he’s the guy — he knows he’s the guy,” Eagles wide receivers coach Aaron Moorehead said. “That’s the difference.”
Brown had a request for Eagles fans earlier this season. He kept hearing comparisons to Terrell Owens, whose body type and playing style is similar to Brown’s and who the Eagles famously acquired in 2004. It was hard to watch Brown in training camp this summer and not think of Owens.
“I’m A.J., and that’s T.O.,” Brown said. “I’m not trying to believe my own hype. T.O. is in the Hall of Fame. I’m in my fourth year. I have a long way to go … it would be nice if fans quieted that down.”
Through 11 games, Brown has 831 receiving yards. He needs 169 more to become the first Eagles wide receiver to reach 1,000 yards since Jeremy Maclin in 2014 (Zach Ertz, a tight end, more recently eclipsed that mark in 2018). Brown’s on a 17-game pace to finish with 1,284 receiving yards, a mark that would surpass Owens’ unforgettable 2004 campaign.
“If I don’t get 1,000, it’s not a good year,” Brown said of the benchmark that’s been elusive to Eagles wide receivers. “That’s not the goal for me.”
It wouldn’t be a surprise if he outpaces those projections and shatters any of his 2022 marks in the coming years. Before the trade was consummated, the franchise’s decision-makers gathered to review film of Brown. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni stood after a few plays and told those around him, “I’m good.” The past seven months only fortified the affirmation.
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“First of all … we just got a top-notch person,” Sirianni said. “I can’t say enough about A.J. the person. … Then you get him out here and there are obviously things that you think to yourself, he can do that, too, and that’s going to be a nice addition to this offense. So, yeah, everything we imagined, as advertised and then some.”
A.J. Brown had over 1,000 yards receiving in each of his first two NFL seasons with the Titans. (Andy Lyons / Getty Images)Moorehead noticed from the spring how seriously Brown takes his craft and how eager he seemed to be coached. That’s not a given — particularly at wide receiver — and especially with the profile of a player Moorehead considers “big, physical and fast, and catching the ball as good as anybody I’ve ever coached.”
Moorehead noted that during walk-throughs, you can find Brown working on his breaks. Brown studies other wide receivers to try to find morsels of their repertories that he can add to his. He approached Sirianni during training camp with a route he saw on Instagram that he wanted to be installed in the Eagles’ offense.
There are parts of Brown’s skill set that one can chalk up to size and athleticism, although much of what he does has nothing to do with genetics.
“Route running,” Moorehead said. “The top of his routes, understanding where people are around him, he’s got a feel.”
“That comes from watching Julio (Jones),” Brown said. “Bigger guys that can get in and out of breaks, that’s what makes them special. Athleticism speaks for itself, but running routes like a smaller guy is tough to defend.”
Moorehead, who once coached college wide receivers, was asked what he would show from Brown in an instructional video to his former pupils. He said the way Brown doesn’t lose speed in and out of his routes, with an ability to “run through the football,” whereas other players have the tendency to slow or stop. The same question was posed to Sirianni, a longtime wide receivers coach who has an affinity for teaching tapes.
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“Just the ability off the line of scrimmage and at the top of the route for a big man,” Sirianni said. “The explosion off that, just how he plays with physical presence. And that happens right at the line of scrimmage and at the top of the route, whether it’s a little flipper at the top or how he gets the guy’s hand off him at the beginning and is able to lean on him and break both ways off that.”
Brown, as the sign above his locker suggests, believes he’s always open because of the way he can work at the top of his routes. He tells quarterbacks to trust that even if he doesn’t win early, he can win late. And because he runs through the catch, Brown is a threat for a big play whenever he touches the ball. He leads all NFL receivers in catches of 50-plus yards since he entered the league with 11, and his 6.1 yards after the catch per reception are the most among the top 20 in receiving yards during that span.
“I really think any time the ball is in my hands, it can be an explosive play,” Brown said. “Whenever I got the ball in my hands, how can I turn this play into 10 extra yards? … And if I actually get 10, I can make it go 30 — or however long.”
The Titans game is coming at an important time in Brown’s season. He set a regular-season career high with 156 receiving yards and three touchdowns in a Week 8 win over the Steelers. He’s only had 172 yards total in the four games since. That included an ankle injury against Washington and lost fumbles during the past two weeks. He had lost a fumble just once before in his career.
Brown missed most of practice last week (and any Thanksgiving festivities) with a stomach illness that left him bedridden, down seven pounds and vomiting so intensely that he popped a blood vessel in his eye. He’s feeling better this week, although his eye is still bloodshot.
“The focus this week is being consistent,” Brown said. “Ankle is something I can’t control. Me protecting the football is something I can control.”
Achieving that consistency and the standard at which he typically plays is more of an objective than avenging the team that traded him. But when looking at his track record in big games, one can borrow an Owens expression: get your popcorn ready.
As a top recruit in Starkville, Miss., Brown went to high school two miles from Mississippi State’s stadium. Leading to his college announcement, there was anticipation that he would choose his hometown school. When he put an Ole Miss cap on, a local reporter reportedly stormed out of the room while classmates booed. This would be akin to the best player Philadelphia has produced in years deciding to sign with the Cowboys instead if the draft didn’t exist.
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For Brown, the decision explained something about him. It goes back to how he was raised, with a father who preached to worry less about what others think and more about his own convictions. He was down to Ole Miss and Alabama, and he wanted to go to a place where he could try to beat the Crimson Tide. So he chose the Rebels.
Brown played one game in Starkville. As a sophomore, in the highly anticipated return (one with even more suspense than Sunday’s game against the Titans), Brown had six catches for 167 yards and a touchdown in an upset of his hometown team. It was, as he called it, his “perfect game.”
“It was one of those games, you realize you’re not even getting tired because you’re so locked in,” Brown said. “You’re stuck in the moment and you try to stay locked in so you don’t lose it.”
Brown said he’s been chasing that high ever since. There have been other big-stage moments to compare. His first NFL game. His first game with the Eagles, when he finished with 155 yards against Detroit. He set his career mark for receptions with 11 against San Francisco in prime time last December. He also had a five-catch, 142-yard performance in the playoffs last season.
GO DEEPER
A.J. Brown's record-setting Eagles debut is good sign he's 'always open'
“To me, it’s no pressure,” said Brown. “Maybe the pressure is on me from the outside. It’s, to me, just having fun, just trying to dominate the person across from me.”
There’s a part of Brown that views it as if he’s back in Starkville playing basketball with the older kids from uptown every day until the summer. Just competing all day, whether it’s Starkville or the NFL.
But there’s another part of Brown, one that he acknowledges, that doesn’t lock away his emotions. “If something’s wrong with me,” he said, “you’re going to know it.”
Brown wasn’t robotic during the contract negotiations with Tennessee, and he said Sunday’s game “means a lot, but I’ve got to keep my emotions down.” He expressed it’s not personal. He knows there are fans who still love him and others “who hate my guts.”
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“I think when you go through things in this league, you learn it’s a business,” Brown said. “Of course, I wanted to try to finish my career as a Titan. I stated that. But I learned it’s a business and you’ve got to do what’s best because they’re going to do what’s best for them. And you grow up.”
Even if he grew from past experiences, Brown emphasized in a separate conversation that he still has growth ahead of him on the field. He’s only now entering the prime of his career — one that could put him in the category of players such as Owens if he continues on this path.
Moorehead played in Indianapolis with Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, offering a unique insight into those top-of-the-league receivers. A player must have certain prerequisites, skills and natural abilities to fit into that category. But Moorehead also noticed a personality trait. They believed they were that kind of player. Brown nods his head when discussing this, pointing to the T-shirts and the sign in his locker stall. He chases being different.
“It’s just a mindset,” Brown said. “First of all, you’ve got to believe it. Then you’ve got to put in the work.”
The stage will be Brown’s on Sunday. And when he takes the field, there will be little question about which receiver is earning the ovation. They’re coming to see him.
(Top photo: Kyle Ross / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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