How Eagles' Sydney Brown Overcame Odds & Obstacles to Reach NFL
PHILADELPHIA – Sydney Brown had never been to the City of Brotherly Love until he arrived for the Philadelphia Eagles’ rookie camp on Thursday as a third-round draft pick a week earlier.
That makes him a rookie in every sense of the word.
“This is all new information,” he said on Friday when asked what he knows about the city and the organization. “I know the championship culture. I think I’m going to do my job to contribute to it in any way I can. Right now, that’s competing at rookie minicamp and moving on in the future with the guys.”
It makes sense that Brown had never been to Philadelphia.
Illinois doesn’t play Temple and Brown grew up with a single mom, a twin brother, Chase, and a younger sister where there was never enough money to take a vacation from their home in London, Ontario.
The money eventually ran out, and the Browns found themselves in a homeless shelter after Sydney and Chase's mom, Raechel Brown, got sick, lost her job, and, ultimately, the family’s apartment.
There was never enough money to allow her boys to play ice hockey, the national sport of Canada, but they found football, and enough money to get her sons to Florida, attending Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School in Bradenton, Fla., where they lived with a host family.
The Brown brothers never lost a game, taking Saint Stephen’s to a 22-0 record in their two seasons there and back-to-back Florida state championships.
The brothers moved on to star at the University of Illinois together.
Sydney went to the Eagles as the 66th overall pick; Chase went in the fifth round, No. 163 overall, to the Cincinnati Bengals.
The brother are extremely close, and Sydney said waiting with his brother, after Sydney had already been picked, was "one of the hardest things I ever sat through."
"I wanted him to get drafted just as badly as myself," he added. "To sit through and just see him count down the picks, and count down the running backs who went in front of him, it was tough. "
Raechel Brown is no longer sick, and her boys, well, they will be cashing NFL-sized paychecks.
For the Philly Brown, stardom could await. The Eagles are high on him and he plays with ferocity.
“I think right now, it’s just about learning the defense, competing, just being the best version of myself every day, earning respect,” Brown said.
“I think that’s kind of my mindset going into this. It’s not, ‘Yeah, there’s an opportunity to start,’ but it’s about what I do and how I earn the respect of the guys around me, especially the guys who have been here much longer than I have.”
Brown played strong safety at Illinois, but at the Senior Bowl, he showed he can play free safety as well. That transition helped the Eagles have a more complete evaluation of him.
“I had a responsibility, and that was to play strong safety at Illinois, and that was to be the best damn strong safety there is in the Big Ten,” Brown said. “That was my job, and I took that to heart.
"So, at the Senior Bowl, they gave me the opportunity to play in the slot, play in the post, kind of show my range and that I can play sideline to sideline, and make plays from that end."
After the upbringing Brown had in Canada, where he and his brother had to help take care of their little sister and be the “men” of the family once they became teenagers, the adversity that the NFL can deliver may pale in comparison.
Brown, though, isn’t taking anything for granted.
“You’re trying to relate stuff to the system that you’ve been a part of,” he said, “so myself, I just try to simplify it. They’re throwing a lot of information at you, but at the end of the day, you’ve played all the positions.
"You’ve got to simplify it, attack it, study, study, study until it’s unconscious competence.”
He was asked, as a follow-up: “So you like studying?”
His response: “Can I say it enough?
Ed Kracz covers the Philadelphia Eagles for SI's EaglesToday.
Please follow him and our Eagles coverage on Twitter at @kracze.
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