Ole Miss WR Brown’s journey to football
OXFORD — Jamie Mitchell and Willie Gillespie had no idea what they were getting into when they floated A.J. Brown’s name in a meeting before spring ball back in 2013.
They were familiar with Brown because he played baseball. He hadn’t come out for football his freshman year, but the coaches knew he had played some in eighth grade and was at least athletic.
“Why don’t you say something to A.J.,” Mitchell, who is now the coach at North Little Rock in Arkansas, remembers saying to his wide receivers coach, Gillespie. “He might want to play.” That was all. “It wasn’t one of those things where we were passionately going after him,” Mitchell said. “It wasn’t one of those things where we were holding our breath, hoping he would play. We had no clue. No clue.”
Five years later, as Brown heads into his junior year at Ole Miss, the 6-foot-1, 225-pound receiver is considered at least one of the, if not the, best wide receivers in the country. As a sophomore he led the Southeastern Conference with 1,252 receiving yards. He has the potential to be the first wide receiver off the board in the 2019 NFL Draft. All this for a young man who, growing up, didn’t expect to play college football.
Brown played multiple sports as a child, inspired by his father’s stories of when he did the same. Pee-wee football (where Brown played running back) was just one in a long list. Baseball was different. “I started swinging a bat as soon as I could walk,” said Brown, who signed with the San Diego Padres out of high school and still spends a week each summer with the organization.
He remembers being 4 or 5 years old walking around the house doing just that. Then the little tot made solid contact. The problem was, he made contact with a fish tank.
The mess of water and broken glass threw his two older sisters into a frenzy. But when Brown retells it, he chuckles to himself. Getting in trouble for breaking things in the house was a common occurrence for a young Brown. That wasn’t going to stop him from getting swings in.
After hours
This isn’t the story of a young man whose athletic ability made up for inexperience.
Just like Brown’s parents couldn’t get him to stop swinging the bat in the house as a kid, his high school baseball coach couldn’t get him to stop swinging in the cages as a teenager.
“We had to put a code on the door because A.J. and about three other of my baseball players at the time wouldn’t leave,” said former Starkville baseball coach Travis Garner, who now coaches at Caledonia.
In order to get the code lock on the side door that led into Starkville’s batting cages and weight room approved, the baseball program also had to install a security camera. Garner could pull up the feed on his phone to make sure the code was only being used by his players to work out.
“You could check it at 9 at night,” Garner said, “A.J.’d be in there.”
Decisions, decisions
Brown turned heads Thursday when he strode onto the Ole Miss practice field as the Rebels wrapped up for the day. A minor hamstring injury had kept him off the field for most of fall camp, but he was steadily progressing toward his return. Ole Miss wasn’t going to risk rushing him back. They knew how much they’d need him come Sept. 1.
After this season Brown will yet again have to weigh his love for both sports. He will be eligible to enter the NFL Draft, and many expect him to take that route. Brown said he wants to keep his options open.
“I want to do both since I’ve been doing both all my life,” he said.
He doesn’t have to worry about how to make that work yet. For now, all he has to do is get healthy. Then he’ll be back to making it look like he’s been playing football his whole life.