LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Thomas Brown was out on the road on a recruiting trip with Georgia head coach Kirby Smart in 2016 when he received an unexpected call from Mark Richt.
“I let it go to the voicemail,” he recalled.
Brown had spent the 2015 season as Richt’s running backs coach after playing for him for four seasons at Georgia. Smart retained Brown after he replaced Richt. It was Brown’s dream job at the time. Richt, though, had a new program to run at the University of Miami, and he needed to fill out his coaching staff.
He needed Brown.
“I didn’t expect him to give me that call,” Brown said. “I thought he was going to end up retiring instead of getting into coaching. And so he gave me my first opportunity to be an (offensive coordinator). I had an opportunity … to be in a different light, to continue to learn and grow from a football standpoint but also develop my leadership qualities as far as managing the entire offense and also an offensive staff.”
Smart tried to convince Brown to stay at Georgia. He needed him, too. Brown, though, wasn’t leaving to be the offensive coordinator for a mid-major program but the “U.” It’s a role Brown held for three seasons under Richt, who handled the play calling.
“(Smart) had some other thoughts as far as what was best for me,” Brown said. “I do understand where he was coming from as far as overall development because he’s done an awesome job at Georgia, just having a chance to be in a championship environment. But that’s an opportunity that was too good to pass up on.”
Brown wasn’t reluctant to move to Miami, just like he wasn’t reluctant to accept Chicago Bears coach Matt Eberflus’ offer this week to replace Shane Waldron as their offensive coordinator. He’ll work with rookie quarterback Caleb Williams a year after being in a similar situation with the Carolina Panthers and quarterback Bryce Young.
“Reluctance? No,” Brown said Wednesday at Halas Hall. “It’s my job. It’s what I’m asked to do. I’m excited about the opportunity. Again, (it’s) unfortunate about the circumstances as far as Shane being fired, but the scenarios between Carolina and here, I don’t correlate at all. I have done it before, and … I’m excited to be able to collaborate with our staff and our players to get it fixed and get it going in the right direction.”
So, who is Thomas Brown? How will he handle what’s ahead of him for the Bears? What does his past say about the Bears’ immediate future and beyond?
The Athletic sat down with Brown for an interview about a range of topics on Nov. 1, two days before the Bears played the Arizona Cardinals and 11 days before he was named the Bears’ offensive coordinator. What Brown said then resonates even more now.
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The football coach and father
Part of Brown’s daily routine involves finding time for his family. He needs to talk to them or see them on a video call. After moving from state to state because of his football coaching career, the decision was made to keep his family in Charlotte, N.C.
“It was trying to give them some type of a normal childhood,” Brown said. “They moved almost every year, with the exception of three years in Miami and three years in L.A.”
Brown and his wife, Jessica, were best friends who met when they were 14. Brown was 22 when they married, and their first of three sons, Orlando, was born soon after. Their second son, Tyson, wasn’t far behind him. Orlando is a sophomore in high school in Charlotte; Tyson is a freshman.
“Fatherhood changed who I was,” Brown said. “It obviously made me a lot less selfish because it wasn’t about just me anymore.”
He’s a different dad for his youngest son, 7-year-old Judah, than he was at first for Orlando.
“When my youngest son was born, I calmed down a lot more,” Brown said, laughing. “Wasn’t as crazy as a father.”
Family is everything for Brown. His father, Thomas Sr., is a bishop, and his mother, Louise, was a longtime teacher. Thomas Sr. didn’t play football. He ran track at Ole Miss. An older cousin introduced Brown to football. His sons now play in high school.
“Obviously, I’m very passionate about the game of football,” Brown said. “I don’t always use the word love because I love the God I serve — I love my family. And I don’t put football in the same category, even though it takes most of my time, but I definitely am big on family (and) also big on creating a legacy for them.”
That, of course, will come through football. Brown never pushed his sons to play sports, but they naturally fell into it, seeing their father at work. Coaching tips and fatherly advice tend to overlap when he talks to them.
“Sports is a great teacher for life,” Brown said. “I just talk about the work-ethic aspect of it. Talent is one thing, but to develop talent and develop skills takes work. It’s also a great lesson for whatever they end up doing in life, whether they make it in sports or not.”
Thomas Brown, right, with tight end Jamal Pettigrew, spent three seasons on Sean McVay’s Rams coaching staff, winning a Super Bowl. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
A certain toughness needs to be learned through failure. He definitely has had his own. Brown, a running back, was a sixth-round pick of the Atlanta Falcons, and his NFL career was ruined by injuries.
“You’re going to suck at times, you’re going to lose games at times — you might lose a game because of you,” Brown said. “So to understand how to deal with that at a young age and how to deal with adversity is very important.”
Brown grew up in a middle-class household. His sons have been more blessed because of his success in the football world. They’ve had more opportunities. They get more of what they want if they behave, he said. So in a sense, life has been easy for them. But this is where football injects itself.
“I do appreciate the aspect of football to harden them up some, to help them grow up some,” Brown said. “Because you’re raising three boys in this world, and this environment — and I’m not talking about physical toughness, but just the mental toughness to overcome things is probably what I spend most of the time on.”
Brown talks about technique and fundamentals with his sons. In the offseason, they train together, too. But he views football as a “great lesson and teacher.”
“It’s how you prepare yourself,” he said. “You get what you put in; you reap what you sow.”
There’s also a lesson that he carries with him from his father.
“You can’t try to always save your kids from every situation,” Brown said. “They have to go through stuff.”
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The McVay connections and influences
When Brown was considering his options after the Panthers this past offseason, the Bears stood out because of Waldron and their connections to the Los Angeles Rams and coach Sean McVay.
The 2020 season was Brown’s first in Los Angeles and Waldron’s last. Waldron left to become the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator. Brown was the Rams’ running backs coach and later added the title of assistant head coach in 2021, the season they won the Super Bowl.
“I just wanted to get back to the brand of football that I believed in,” Brown said. “But also just be able to be connected to someone I can trust, and that’s big in this game and big in life in general.”
That’s probably why Brown opened his first news conference as Bears offensive coordinator by thanking Waldron for helping him in his career and acknowledging the human toll firings have on families.
“He was phenomenal to me and my family to help onboard us coming to the NFL,” Brown said Wednesday.
Brown’s relationship with McVay predates 2020. It started in high school. Brown was a star running back at Tucker High in Georgia, and McVay played quarterback at nearby Marist School, a private school that had recruited Brown.
“(McVay) actually beat out Calvin Jones for (Georgia) Gatorade player of the year, which is ‘wow,’” Brown said. “He was a big-time baller. He’s had a couple better accolades since then. But yeah, he was a big-time player in high school. … We had some big-time rivalries. That was our biggest and toughest opponent year in, year out.”
McVay later connected with Brown in 2015. He was in the NFL with Washington then, and Brown was coaching running backs at Georgia. McVay reached out with questions about tight ends entering the NFL Draft. Years later, Rams southeast area scout Michael Pierce became another connection for Brown and McVay. Pierce scouted Georgia, Miami and South Carolina, which were all coaching career stops for Brown.
“(Pierce) calls me one day out of the blue and asked me if I would be interested in the Rams running back job,” Brown said. “And I’m like: ‘You don’t have to ask me stupid questions. Of course I would be.’”
Ten minutes later, McVay called Brown. This time they didn’t discuss tight ends but a day and time for an interview, which came weeks later. Brown got the job.
“That’s the biggest impact from a coaching environment standpoint that I’ve been around,” Brown said. “Just having a chance to be around him, learn from him how he runs his program. Obviously, offensive football-wise, just philosophically, we have some minor differences, but I think most of what I believe in from a fundamental standpoint I got from L.A. from being around him in that time. So, definitely a big influence.”
Thomas Brown was the Panthers’ offensive coordinator last season, working with rookie quarterback Bryce Young. (Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
Brown has other influences. Monday, he highlighted his time spent last season with former Detroit Lions head coach Jim Caldwell, a senior assistant for Carolina. Brown earlier mentioned Tony Ball, his running backs coach at Georgia, and Andy Ludwig, who was Wisconsin’s offensive coordinator in 2014 when he coached the Badgers’ running backs. Ludwig introduced Brown to what he eventually learned in depth from McVay schematically.
“I didn’t use the phrase at the time, but (it’s) understanding the marriage of the run and the pass that I learned when I was in L.A.,” Brown said. “(Ludwig) did a great job organizing formations, shifts and motions that married with the run game, the play-action pass, the keepers.”
Then there’s Richt, who coached at Georgia from 2001 to 2015. Brown chose to play for Richt over Florida State because of how he was recruited.
“The most unique thing about it was he was the only head coach I spoke with who didn’t say a word about my football-playing ability,” Brown said. “It wasn’t about how many carries he’ll give me. It wasn’t about you becoming an All-SEC player. It wasn’t about the league. It was about my development as a person, (and) that’s what my upbringing was about.”
That connection eventually led to Brown’s first offensive coordinator job at Miami.
“He did a really good job trying to hold everybody accountable to a higher standard,” Brown said. “And he’s one of the biggest examples I had of how to incorporate a family atmosphere while still being a football coach.”
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The Bears’ vibe and the future
Wednesday, Eberflus and Bears players highlighted the energy, passion and toughness Brown brings to the team now that he’s in charge of the offense.
“It’s a lot of new energy,” receiver DJ Moore said. “He’s excited to be out there. He’s demanding.”
“It’s very refreshing and a new light for excitement,” left tackle Braxton Jones said. “(It’s) a different type of energy that he brings.”
He also brings different experiences — good and bad — into his role. It’s part of what has made him an intriguing head-coaching candidate in recent cycles. There’s more to him.
What Brown experienced last season with Carolina is vastly different from what he enjoyed in Los Angeles. In October, Brown said resiliency is the No. 1 thing he learned from his one season in Carolina, which included him calling plays in two separate stints, the latter after the Panthers fired coach Frank Reich.
“I’ve grown the most and continue to grow the most when I’m put in environments where I’m uncomfortable and I have to endure some stuff I don’t want to have to endure,” Brown said in his interview with The Athletic. “Going through last season in Carolina, that was uncomfortable, but it helped me grow a ton. There are invaluable lessons I learned from that, that success would never teach me.
“And I always tell people I am who I am and where I am because of my failure, not because of my successes. My successes look great on a resume, and they’ve helped me increase my salary at times, but the failures, the struggles, the adversity is what sharpen who I am.”
(Top photo: Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)
