A.J. Brown Reflects on Season, Trade to Eagles
PHILADELPHIA – Reality sunk in for A.J. Brown when he showed up for work on Thursday, and it was February and work meant getting ready for Super Bowl LVII in Arizona on Feb. 12.
Not that it surprised him that the Eagles would still be playing.
He knew this was a possibility all the way back in Week 1 when the Eagle beat a feisty Lions team, 38-35, in front of an extremely fiery crowd at Ford Field in Detroit.
Afterward, he looked around the locker room and saw “a lot of good pieces.”
“This was always the expectation,” he said. “When I first got here, my first postgame speech, I told them I didn’t want to put any pressure on them, but this is the goal. This is why we play the game. I’m not playing for any individual awards. I’m playing the game to be the best and hold the trophy up at the end.
“Right now, we’re right here. We’re at the door. We just have to go take it.”
Brown said as the season unfolded, and the Eagles were sitting at 8-0 before they lost for the first time, one of just three defeats they endured this year, he realized exactly how special the team could be.
“This group held everybody accountable,” he said. “It’s football and stuff happens, and we had a hiccup here, a hiccup there, but it’s a special group, and I think the group held everybody accountable.”
Brown was one of the “pieces” brought in by GM Howie Roseman during an offseason of superior roster building.
Would the Eagles be in this position without his franchise-record 1,496 yards receiving and 11 touchdowns?
Unlikely.
The numbers haven’t been near as gaudy in two playoff games, with Brown having just seven catches for 50 yards in the two wins to reach the Super Bowl, as the Eagles have flexed their muscle in the running game, with 416 yards and seven rushing touchdowns.
“I’ve been having people coming at me sideways about me not putting up (any) numbers, but you have to watch the game to see how our O-line and running backs have been dominating,” he said.
“We’re just doing whatever it takes right now. You never know how the game will go, just be prepared. I’m doing my job, I’m blocking, whatever the case may be. I don’t really care how it gets done, as long as it gets done.”
Brown recalled being in tears when he agreed to a draft night trade that sent him from the team that drafted him in 2019, the Tennessee Titans, to the Eagles.
Then the phone rang, and it was his close friend and new quarterback Jalen Hurts.
“As soon as he called me, we got to laughing and the tears went away,” said Brown. “I was ready for a new start.”
Who the quarterback would be was important for that new start in agreeing to leave Tennessee.
“All I needed to know was who would be my quarterback, and that told me everything I needed to know,” he said. “I was going to let the chips fall where they may. He made it a lot easier to make the trade happen.”
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Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglesmaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
