PHILADELPHIA − So there was A.J. Brown, running down the field, with Darius Slay draped all over him in yet another mundane preseason drill on a hot and humid August day.
Yet it wasn’t mundane at all for Brown, the Eagles’ star receiver, or Slay, the Eagles’ Pro Bowl cornerback. They were competing like it was the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, with everything on the line.
And Slay was winning.
It seemed like there was no way that Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts could fit the ball into Brown’s hands, not with Slay step for step with him. And yet, at the very last second, Brown stuck his hands up and hauled in the pass over his back shoulder.
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Brown calls that skill “late hands.”
That’s just one thing Brown has brought to the Eagles ever since general manager Howie Roseman traded for him last April 28.
That has trickled down to DeVonta Smith, the Eagles’ first-round draft pick in 2021 who set a franchise record for receiving yards by a rookie last season with 916. That goes for the entire receiving corps, and of course, quarterback Jalen Hurts, whose future as an Eagle in large part rests upon his success getting the ball to Brown.
“He goes out and competes every day,” Slay said about Brown. “I push him. He pushes me as well. He’s a guy that just keeps going for it. He keeps working. I see him over there teaching DeVonta ‘late hands’ because he is a guy who can catch the ball at a high rate, but he’s trying to find a way to beat everybody else.
“AJ is doing a great job teaching the young guys in the room, and they’re doing a great job listening.”
It’s an effect that the Eagles haven’t seen since Terrell Owens in 2004, where his presence made everybody else better, from the other wide receivers to the quarterback.
And there’s already proof of Brown making everyone better, much like Owens did with the Eagles in 2004, the year the Eagles went to the Super Bowl.
“He’s always teaching,” Smith said about Brown. “If he sees something that we do at practice that’s not right, he’s going to correct us on it, let us know what we could’ve done better. Even if there’s something that we do that he likes, he asks us, ‘What did you do here?’ So a guy that helps people and always wants to learn from other people.”
Owens had 1,200 yards receiving in 14 games in 2004. In the Super Bowl, playing on a surgically-repaired, but not fully healed broken ankle, Owens had 9 catches for 122 yards in the Eagles’ 24-21 loss to New England.
Sure, the Eagles have had other top receivers since T.O. DeSean Jackson was a great deep threat and Jeremy Maclin a good possession receiver. Alshon Jeffery was great at getting 50-50 balls in the 2017 Super Bowl season.
But none combine all of the traits that Brown does − a deep threat, someone who can run after the catch, and come down with 50-50 balls. That is, except for T.O.
That’s because Brown, at 6-foot-1, 226 pounds, is built like a running back with the speed and skills of a wide receiver.
“He is a physical specimen,” tight end Dallas Goedert said. “For him to be able to move the way he does, at the weight he is, how strong he is, his physicality, and the way he attacks leverage, it’s fun to watch.
“AJ is going to have a big impact on our offense, for me, for Smitty for Quez (Watkins). I feel like the middle of the field should be more open than it was in years past.”
BFFs forever?
But it goes beyond the field.
Brown has an outsized personality, much like T.O. did. That means Brown will approach his quarterback and talk forcefully if he has to, much as Owens did with then-Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.
When the Eagles completed the three-way deal for Owens in the spring of 2004, Owens told reporters that he and McNabb belonged together “like peanut butter and jelly.” But they had never known each other before becoming teammates.
Hurts and Brown have been best friends since they were in high school, when Hurts was trying to recruit Brown to join him at Alabama. Brown went to Mississippi instead, but they stayed in touch. In fact, they were working out together a week before Brown was traded to the Eagles.
Sure, that relationship between McNabb and Owens soured in 2005, becoming more like oil and water. Owens wanted a new contract just one season after signing a seven-year deal worth as much as $49 million.
That summer, Owens first got sent home from training camp for badmouthing McNabb and head coach Andy Reid, famously holding a press conference in the driveway of his New Jersey home after doing situps for reporters. Then he got kicked off the team for good midway through that season.
That doesn’t seem likely to happen with Hurts and Brown. The two are so close that they famously FaceTimed each other after the deal, and Brown showed up to training camp wearing a baseball cap with the words “Hurts SZN” written across the top.
“I’m gonna go talk to him. I don’t care,” Brown said. “It don’t matter if he got a frown or whatever. I’m gonna say what I gotta say. So it’s never personal with us. We’re friends first. And we always try to get the same thing done at the same time. We do a great job with that of putting our friendship aside, putting business first.”
Added Hurts: “I just think we’re all just holding each other accountable, and in the end, we just communicate, to be honest. That’s just the communication part of the game. Whether he sees something on the field, we talk about it. Or whether I see something on the field, we talk about it.
“I’ll say, ‘Let’s think about this, consider this.’ But I think that’s just part of the growth between receiver-quarterback.”
The T.O. effect
The proof, of course, will come on the field. It certainly did with Owens.
In the five seasons before Owens arrived, McNabb never completed more than 58.4% of his passes, never had more than 3,365 yards passing, never had a rating above 86.0, or more than 25 TD passes.
In his only full season with Owens, McNabb completed 64% of his passes, threw for 3,875 yards, had a passer rating of 104.7 and threw 31 touchdown passes.
McNabb never approached the completion percentage or passer rating again in the final seven seasons of his career, all without Owens.
Sure, you can make the argument that McNabb was throwing to the likes of Todd Pinkston and James Thrash before Owens arrived. But Owens made Pinkston better, too.
Pinkston averaged 16.0 yards per reception the year before Owens arrived, with 785 yards receiving. He averaged 18.8 yards per reception in 2004 with 676 yards receiving.
Owens currently ranks third in NFL history in receiving yards with 15,594, behind only Jerry Rice and Larry Fitzgerald. He is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Brown has a long way to go before he’s in that category. But there is proof that Brown, through his first three NFL seasons with the Tennessee Titans, has a similar impact on the players around him, too.
Just look at Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill.
Tannehill, the No. 8 overall pick in the 2012 draft, spent his first six seasons with the Miami Dolphins. Over those six seasons, Tannehill completed 62.8% of his passes, threw for 128 TDs with 75 interceptions, and had a passer rating of 87.0. His record as a starter was 42-46.
It was mediocrity at its finest.
The Dolphins, so convinced that Tannehill had reached his ceiling, traded him to the Titans in March 2019 for two late-round picks.
A month after the trade, the Titans drafted Brown in the second round. Then the season began and Tannehill lost the competition for the starting job to Marcus Mariota.
Tannehill replaced Mariota in Week 6 after the Titans had started 2-4. Brown, a rookie, had gotten off to a slow start, with just 14 catches for 273 yards to that point, not surprising for a rookie. He had just one game with 100 yards receiving.
But Brown and Tannehill took off after that. Tannehill started the last 10 games, completed 70.3% of his passes with 22 TDs and six INTs. For the season, Tannehill led all NFL quarterbacks with a passer rating of 117.5. The Titans went 7-3 to finish the regular season, then won two playoff games before losing to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship game.
Brown was a big part of that. He had 38 catches over those last 10 games for 778 yards, averaging 20.5 yards per reception. He had four games with at least 100 yards receiving.
In their three seasons together, Tannehill completed 67.3% of his passes with a rating of 102.0. His record was 30-13. Brown had at least 1,000 yards receiving his first two years before dropping off slightly to 869 yards last season while missing four games with an injury.
Sure, you can make the argument that running back Derrick Henry is just as responsible for Tannehill’s success. After all, he ran for 1,540 yards in 2019 and 2,027 yards in 2020, leading the NFL both seasons. But that’s not necessarily the case. Henry ran for 1,059 yards the year before Brown and Tannehill arrived.
No wonder Tannehill was shocked when Brown was traded to the Eagles, as he told reporters who cover the Titans after the deal: “Professionally, it hurt. Top target, heck of a football player, made big plays for us consistently over the last three years. Personally, it hurt. A.J.’s a good friend. Had a lot of great times, great memories on and off the field with him.”
‘Going to bat’ for his QB
So what can we expect from Hurts?
He completed just 61.3% of his passes last season, which ranked 26th among NFL quarterbacks, and he had a passer rating of 87.2 in his first full season as a starter.
Both of those numbers have to improve, both for the Eagles’ chances for success this season, but also for Hurts’ chances to remain the Eagles’ starting quarterback beyond this season.
So what happens if Brown doesn’t feel like he’s getting the ball enough? Or if Hurts isn’t throwing it where Brown wants it? Or if the other receivers don’t feel like they’re getting the ball enough?
All of this can quickly ruin a friendship. But this is why Brown is convinced this will work, as he said in April.
“I’m going to go to bat for him every Sunday because he’s my friend,” Brown said. “It’s a different mentality you bring when you’re playing for somebody that’s important to you. It’s not about yourself anymore. You’re playing for someone else. So, I’m going to go above and beyond for this team and for him.”
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
