Even better
Dowdell, Mocs continue to improve
Brandon Dowdell has always been one to push the envelope, for better or worse.
Growing up in Crisp County, Georgia, there were tales of how he was the worst kid in school, according to some who knew him back then. But he grew from that, becoming an honor student in the classroom and a standout on the football field in high school. He earned all-state recognition as a defensive back for the Crisp County Cougars, and he once scored an offensive touchdown, returned a punt for another score and picked off two passes in a single game.
He may have had some knucklehead ways and he may have been willing to take some chances, but that’s what’s made him who he was. Now fast-forward to college and head north from Crisp County, over the state line to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where Dowdell has consistently been on the field and making plays on defense — and occasionally on special teams — for the Mocs.
In his freshman season in 2017, he was sixth in the Football Championship Subdivision in punt return average at 12.6 yards, including a 37-yarder against The Citadel. He also had 130 yards on three kickoff returns in that game, including a pair of 50-yard returns, and he made the Southern Conference All-Freshman team that year. He has 11 interceptions in his Mocs career, which is tied for sixth in program history with David McCrary (1982-85) and Kadeem Wise (2010-13), who is now UTC’s director of football operations.
Dowdell’s tendency to see what he can get away with is still part of his nature, though. It helps on the field when you can make plays, but not always off the field.
He signed and played his first two UTC seasons under a different coaching staff than the current one, and when Rusty Wright took over the program in December 2018, player and coach clashed a number of times early on. The conflict was serious enough that Wright wasn’t sure Dowdell would even remain a Moc.
“It’s just that as a player and a coach, sometimes you don’t see things eye to eye,” Dowdell said this week. “You know, we just had to come together; I had to understand his philosophy and his ways, because he’s coming in with a whole new coaching style. People are going to bump heads, they’re going to have their problems, but we really didn’t have a problem and I realized he was just trying to make me a better player.
“He was just trying to see how he could make me better, and I told him I wanted to be coached, so he did a good job of putting me in positions and letting me know how he was going to coach me, because he saw potential in me.”
Last spring Wright noted the two had one of their clashes, but as the two have seemingly grown more together, it has led to Dowdell’s best season on the field — which is pretty impressive for the 5-foot-9, 195-pound senior safety, considering he has twice made the All-SoCon first team as a defensive back. He has already set a career high for interceptions with five this season — which comes after he graduated with a business degree in the spring — and he has been in on 49 tackles, another career high with two games remaining in the regular season.
“Yeah, he did test me, and that’s OK. That’s what I’m here for,” Wright said. “But to be honest with you, there hadn’t been a better one for us the last six, seven months, just how he is as a person, and I think the biggest thing is Brandon made a commitment to himself to be better, and made a commitment to that group of guys back there that he’s playing with to be better — and it shows. I could not be happier for the young man.”
For all of his on-field accomplishments, the one thing he has not been able to do at UTC is find the end zone — something fellow Mocs safety Jerrell Lawson has done twice in his career by returning an interception for a touchdown, including once this season. (Dowdell dropped a potential pick-six two weeks ago against Furman.)
The Mocs (6-3, 5-1) will play their final road game of the regular season when they take on Mercer (6-2, 5-1) at 3 p.m. Saturday. It’s a game with huge implications on the SoCon title race because the winner will be in the driver’s seat for the league’s automatic bid into the FCS playoffs. Macon is only an hour away from Dowdell’s hometown of Cordele, so there will likely be friends and family in attendance.
The Mocs are seemingly closer to what they consider playing their best game.
Could this be the week with so much on the line?
“We’re close,” Dowdell said after last Saturday’s win at Wofford. “It’s just little things here and there. It’s like we’re one game away from where we want to be at; each game we keep improving. At the beginning of the season, we had our goals written out that we just had to find ourselves, and now we’re getting in a groove — the offense is clicking, the defense is clicking and we’re playing off each other. All three phases of the game are clicking pretty good, we just have to feed off each other’s energy.
“It’s good to see what the future holds, and it’s good to see what we can do.”