BOUNCING BACK
Duane Brown has endured his share of challenges lately.
Duane Brown is paid lots of money to block people, a job he has held for nine seasons. And the last time the Texans played, a week ago Sunday against the Detroit Lions, Brown might have done it as well as he ever has with the game on the line in the fourth quarter. One play in particular stood out.
The Texans, leading by seven points with almost half a quarter remaining, needed to take a sizeable chunk of time off the clock while comeback maestro Matthew Stafford paced the visitors’
Texans veteran Duane Brown is the team’s anchor, on and off the field
sideline at NRG Stadium. It was secondand-2 at the Detroit 31 when Brock Osweiler handed off to Alfred Blue and Blue churned toward the gaping hole he saw in the right side of the Lions’ defensive front, a passage provided exclusively by Brown.
taken on two Lions as the play developed and handily won both battles, neutralizing end Devon Taylor at the line of scrimmage before peeling off to engage middle linebacker Tahir Whitehead. Blue broke for 19 yards, ensuring the Texans a field goal that would help keep Stafford at bay.
“The way he blocked the run against Detroit at the end of the game,” coach Bill O’Brien said, “that’s Duane Brown.”
Trying times
These have been the best of times and the worst of times for the longesttenured Texan, the team’s stoic, standup anchor at left tackle for nearly a decade. In the past 11 months, he has been suspended (although hardly anybody knew it at the time) and then cleared on appeal for ingesting PEDtainted meat in Mexico. He has also been politicized and, in return, vilified. He has been badly injured and now, it appears, fully recovered. He has been equal parts physically broken and emotionally bruised.
Brown’s recent chapter has been the strangest and most challenging in a career that began when the Texans took him in the first round of the 2008 draft. There have been two unwavering constants, though. His football skills and his gift for leading by example have never not been apparent to anybody who was paying attention. Receiver DeAndre Hopkins said he saw Brown as “the perfect role model” from the first day he arrived in town.
Defensive end Antonio Smith was signed away from Arizona’s NFC champions when Brown was starting his second season. After they first grappled in a training-camp drill, Smith told him, “‘You are already one of the best tackles in this league. You don’t even know how good you can be.’ The raw talent, it was all there. It was just about developing his game.”
The Texans family didn’t need much time to figure out something else about him, something that has roared to the fore of late as Brown, all the while rehabbing from a career-endangering torn quad muscle suffered in the 2015 regular-season finale against Sunday’s opponent, Jacksonville, struggled to get his mind around America’s unrelenting contradictions, framed by the most divisive of presidential elections.
“Duane has a social conscience,” Texans general manager Rick Smith said. “And I think our players should be their authentic selves. When something grabs their attention, their heart, they should follow their intuition.”
Brown’s social conscience prompted him to raise a fist on a sideline during the playing of the national anthem Sept. 22 at New England, his answer to San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s having taken a knee to protest the recent spate of police shootings of unarmed AfricanHe’d Americans. It’s also what prompted Brown to explain himself in writing with a first-person story published by Sports Illustrated. The news peg? As a Texans rookie he had been detained, then humiliated, by a local police officer.
“Like so many other young black men,” Brown wrote, “I was pulled over in a routine traffic stop (he says he’d been caught going 10 mph over the speed limit) that ended up as anything but routine. I hadn’t committed any crime, but that didn’t stop the officer from treating me like a criminal. ‘What was I doing? Why was I driving a rented car with an outof-state license?’ I wanted so desperately to defuse what he had made into a confrontational situation that I tried pulling up a recent article on my phone to prove I was a member of the Texans. He still didn’t believe me, instead opting to make me sit on a curb for upwards of 45 minutes in intense heat so he could exercise his power over me.
“The entire experience made me feel incredibly angry and frustrated, but even worse, it made me question the legitimacy of law enforcement; something to this day I remain reticent to do on account of the countless public servants who put their lives on the line every single day to uphold the oaths they have sworn to. Still, if someone like me could be treated like that — simply because of the way I looked — other innocent people surely endure much, much worse.”
Keeping things in perspective
Brown is a wealthy man because he can knock people on their butts. Because he’s a football star, lots of really good stuff comes his way. But while there’s no mistaking his place in Houston’s celebrity hierarchy, he found out how quickly the rules can change when he detours back through the real world. Brown hasn’t forgotten where he came from because, as an African-American, he knows that place is never far away. Out of uniform, he’s as vulnerable as the next guy.
And when pressed, he admits he’s worried things are going to get worse now that the American people have elected Donald Trump as their next president. Nonetheless, in post-practice interviews Wednesday, after saying he was “surprised (and) shocked” by the outcome, he twice congratulated “the Trump campaign” for its victory and insisted it’s important for people of all colors and political persuasions to remain calm and “see how things play out.”
“I have my opinions and my beliefs,” he said. “They’re a lot more in line with President Obama’s than Trump’s. I remember how I felt (in the Texans locker room the day after Obama was elected) eight years ago. But we’ve got to give this a chance. We don’t have a choice. All I can tell you is I’m going to try to be the best person I can be. A lot of people I know are devastated. Man, I’m trying not to go there.”
Note, however, that if Brown feels another overt display of protest is required, we can count on same from him. The hate he got notwithstanding, he insists he wouldn’t change a thing.
“Not at all. I wouldn’t take anything back,” he said. “I stand firm in my beliefs about what was going on. A lot of people took it out of context, like I was trying to disrespect the flag and the country. That’s not it. I raised my fist in solidarity for those fighting against the injustices that have been happening. Having said that, I want to move beyond protest … to get involved — hands on, being more proactive — in things in the community that can bring us together, create some unity. That’s never been more important, especially now.”
Toward that end, he has already been a front-and-center participant in a meeting that brought together Texans owner Bob McNair, the GM Smith, other players and Houston mayor Sylvester Turner. It began a dialogue that Brown intends to continue.
Antonio Smith hadn’t yet returned to the Texans’ fold when Brown put his fist in the air, but he wasn’t surprised to hear it happened.
“I’m proud of Duane for standing up for what he believes in,” Smith said. “That’s who he is.”
“DON’T TAKE ANYTHING ON THE CHIN. ALWAYS FIGHT FOR WHAT’S RIGHT.”