Louisville RB Isaac Brown Learning to Deal With the Weight of Expectations

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As fans know, college football is the epitome of a team sport. At any given moment on the gridiron, all 11 guys need to do their job in order to ensure success, and even just one missed assignment can completely blow a play up.

While teamwork and cohesion is critical to achieving victory, we all know that some players have a bigger role in winning games than others. Whether that be due to their talent level or the position they play, some players are inherently more valuable than others.

For the Louisville football program, there's little doubt that their best player heading into the upcoming 2025 season is Isaac Brown.

The 5-foot-9, 190-pound all-purpose back is coming off of a dynamic true freshman campaign. Appearing in all 13 games and making nine starts, including the final eight, Brown rushed for 1,173 yards and 11 touchdowns on 165 carries, while also catching 30 passes for 152 yards and a touchdown.

Of course, with that, there comes the pressure to perform at a higher level for year two. Considering he didn't become the starter until a month into the 2024 season, coupled with the natural offseason progression, it's expected that Brown will be among the best running backs in all of college football.

Dealing with the weight of those expectations is something that Brown has to grapple with.

"It's hard because I got a lot of pressure, and they want to perform how I performed last year," Brown said. "I got a lot on my shoulders. I'm just trying to pray, hope I played better this year than last year, but I think I put in the work."

Adding to said pressure are the amount of accolades Brown has already accumulated in his short college career up to this point. His true freshman season earned him Second-Team All-ACC honors, and he was named the ACC Offensive and Overall Rookie of the Year. He was also named a Freshman All-American by PFF and 247Sports.

Even before taking a single snap this season, the preseason honors have been pouring in. He has earned six different preseason All-American honors, including a First-Team nod, and was voted to the 2025 Preseason All-ACC Team. He has also been named to the preseason watch lists for the Doak Walker Award, Paul Hornung Award, Maxwell Award and Walter Camp Player of the Year.

Fortunately, running backs coach Chris Barclay has been a huge asset for Brown this offseason in terms of dealing with the pressure.

"I tell him 'don't worry about that.' We try to focus on this year, we don't focus on what happened last year," Barclay said during fall camp. "He talks about that, but we've had many conversations that there is no pressure. We just got to go out and play one play at a time.

"This is a new year. Last year was last year, and it was what it was, but we've got to prove ourselves all over again. It's almost like this is starting over from scratch. So don't focus on that. Let me be great today, let me be great on this rep, and that's all that matters right now. He's a young guy, and there's people in his ear and things like that. But we just stay on him, and communicate with him."

Barclay knows just how to help Brown deal with the pressure of expectations, because once upon a time, he was in a similar situation.

As a true freshman at Wake Forest back in 2002, Barclay also burst onto the scene from seemingly out of nowhere. He finished that year with 144 rushes for 703 yards and nine touchdowns, and immediately became one of the best player in the ACC after just one year in college.

Barclay would follow that standout true freshman year up with three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons, including being named the ACC Player of the Year in 2005 as a senior. Dealing with increased attention and expectations is something Barclay had to deal with himself as a young player, and he has imparted his wisdom onto Brown over the course of the offseason.

"That's all I spoke to him about all summer," Barclay said. "I remember after my big freshman year, then coming into my sophomore year, just the amount of pressure that I felt. The way the defense is adjusted to playing me, seeing heavier boxes. I told him, 'Hey, man, it might be a little crowded in there early on, and that that's respect to you and what you all have done. But we've gotta let the game come to us.' We don't need to go looking for the home run every time I touch the football. Play the game. It'll come to you, and focus on one play at a time.

"As we continue to evolve offensively, the quarterback's doing a great job distributing the football, it'll loosen up some of those boxes in there, and then we'll be able to do our thing. It goes all hand in hand, so we just don't need to press. We need to make sure that we play team football, protect the quarterback when it's in the passing game, and then we can take advantage of the run opportunities."

It also helps that, on top of Barclay helping his young running back deal with the pressure, Brown himself believes he can live up to these expectations and then some. Early in his freshman year, Brown was still trying to actively get more familiar with the playbook and just dealing with the physicality of the college game when compared to high school.

With a year in the system under his belt, on top of an additional year to work on his conditioning and athleticism, Brown believes he's an all-around much better player than he was a season ago.

"I got better on and off the field," he said. "On the field, everything's slowing down for me, for real. Last year, was just out there running. Now, I feel like the game's slowed down for me, and I can have more explosive plays than I had last year."

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