on Rams star coach Thomas Brown

Why Rams assistant Thomas Brown may be the man to meet NFL’s next moment

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/3392816/2022/07/05/thomas-brown-rams-georgia-coach/?source=emp_shared_article

Thomas and Jessica Brown exchanged a knowing glance as they reminisced about their last decade.

“Becoming an offensive coordinator, a head coach — those were never my goals when I first started coaching,” he said.

“It’s true,” said Jessica, laughing.

After a standout career at Georgia and a brief stint in the NFL, Brown’s plan was to coach his old position, running back, for a while, then retire and disappear with his family into the countryside.

His plans have changed.

After roles at several different colleges, and unbeknownst to Brown, he appeared on Rams head coach Sean McVay’s radar — and McVay’s notorious hiring list. He hired Brown in 2020, and just one season into his tenure as the Rams’ running backs coach, Brown was promoted to assistant head coach.

In 2021, during the team’s Super Bowl run, Brown interviewed for an NFL head coaching job and an offensive coordinator vacancy. In 2022, as the Rams’ new tight ends coach, he’ll help coordinate the defending champs’ passing game while his name gains momentum in hiring circles across the league.

As a player at Georgia from 2004-07, when he rushed for 2,646 yards and twice finished top 10 in the SEC in yards per carry, Brown seemed to attack the position with a specific fearlessness. He dove into the contact with a clear-eyed savviness that switched the advantage — how could he initiate the hit, not simply be the recipient of it? How could he create opportunities in hard-to-maneuver places?

Now 36, Brown admits that, for much of his life, he has feared failure. But, as in his playing days, it hasn’t stopped him from throwing himself into every opportunity.

“I am not who I am, or where I am, because of any successes I’ve had,” he said. “I am who I am because of my failures. That’s what made me … Human nature is to run from problems, to run from difficult situations and to run toward safety … (But) I never wanted to be ‘OK’ at anything. Don’t tell me I’m ‘OK’.”

Brown never thought he would be in this particular moment, in the space between what he has been and what he seems destined to become. But during a time of changing philosophy and sociology in the NFL, it’s clear he is more prepared than most to meet it.

Jessica greeted me at the Brown’s front door for our interview in late May. She floated — she is a person who floats — through their bright, high-ceilinged foyer and into their cozy living room, where Brown sat — he is a person who plants — in a square leather and wood chair. He watched with an amused expression as Jessica, the people-magnet of the couple, conducted a tour of their kitchen with Bentley, a precocious Goldendoodle prancing in tow.

They’ve known each other since they were 14 and lived a short distance from each other in Georgia. Now they live in a spacious home just north of Los Angeles, where Jessica, a creative, runs her own business, and they co-homeschool their three kids (Orlando, Tyson and Judah).

As teenagers, they used to watch Sunday night football games while on the phone together, each cradling receivers to their cheeks. Brown still FaceTimes Jessica before every road game as he walks a lap around the visiting field. It is their special time to balance each other as they often do, now that their lives have picked up such speed over the last few years.

Brown was a quiet, introverted child, but by no means was he shy — he simply preferred to study and learn people before opening up to them. Over time, and coaxed out by his roles in coaching and by Jessica’s own personality, that developed into a unique ability to quickly read people and connect with them in their headspace instead of forcing them into his.

“That’s a big part of my foundation,” said Brown, “my dad used to call me observant, because I was a people-watcher. I’d sit and not talk for hours, but I’d watch everybody in that room, watch how they’d move.

“Through that, I learned how to, I would say, read people’s spirits — how they move, if I’m going to be able to engage with you in a productive manner. In the world I live in, from a football standpoint, it’s supposed to be all about communication, about connection.”

“He’s hard-headed, too,” Jessica says with a chuckle.

Indeed, Brown is notorious for sparking animated debates in the Rams’ facilities. He is still constantly analyzing situations and people, just like he did as a kid. Now, though, the end of that process doesn’t mean keeping his thoughts inside. Brown has learned to say what he thinks.

“Most people don’t want to be called on their bullshit,” said Brown. “I was very hesitant, at the beginning of my coaching career, to open my mouth and give my opinion when my opinion was different.”

He’s gotten over that.

“Whether you’re the janitor or you’re Sean McVay, I’m going to treat you the same,” Brown said. “I respect your authority … but some people place their value of others on their position in life, and I don’t understand that at all.

It’s a quality especially valued by McVay, who praised Brown prior to promoting him to assistant head coach last year for being unafraid to tell him the truth, even if it meant taking extra time to work through a problem.

“There’s no ego when he walks into a room, but he walks into a room with a purpose,” Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford said of his former Georgia teammate. “I think that’s something we all feel when we see him and hear from him … You can’t fool the locker room. Been around people who have tried, and it doesn’t work.”

“Thomas is a special guy,” added tight end Tyler Higbee, “He’s built to lead people.”

Third-year running back Cam Akers said that, more than anything else, Brown is consistent in his relationships with players. Brown recognized what Akers needed most amid the bright lights of his rookie 2020 season and while rehabbing through injury in 2021.

Akers wanted to be coached hard, but where some coaches would interpret that as an increase in shouting, discipline or harshness, Brown understood that for Akers, it actually meant sticking to a detailed and technical regimen each day. A rookie starter who suffered a torn Achilles ahead of what many predicted to be a breakout season, Akers had quite a tumultuous start to his NFL career. Brown became a fixed point, at a time when Akers most needed one.

“He’s the same person every day,” said Akers. “He tries not to get too high or too low, tries not to get too mad or take too much pride in things because he wouldn’t want us to come in a certain way (either) … He’s in it like we would be.”

That literally spills over onto the field, where Brown is an active and dynamic coach. Players believe he connects more fully to them because they feel like he is with them, not just talking at them.

Sony Michel has been coached by Brown twice: in college at Georgia and again with the Rams in 2021, where he was a key member of last year’s Super Bowl-winning team, just like he was as a rookie with the Patriots in 2018.

“I’ve been around great coaches; I’ve been coached hard throughout my career and throughout my time playing football,” he said. “But Thomas is one who is still in it. He’s still running drills. He’s not just telling us, ‘Hey, go run this drill.’ He’s showing us how to run the drill full-speed … He’s one of us while also teaching. He’s not just standing there teaching, he’s a part of it, he’s in the action. He’s giving us the best possible look he can as a coach.

“I think that’s his way of showing us, ‘Hey, I’m here for you guys.’”

In the years after his appointment as the Rams’ then-30-year-old head coach in 2017, McVay’s highly productive and quarterback-friendly offense — as well as the then-similar scheme cultivated by former colleague and current division rival Kyle Shanahan — have been coveted by those with hiring power across the league. Four of McVay’s former coordinators or assistants (two OCs, one defensive coordinator and one quarterbacks coach) are now head coaches, while many more pollinate the sport with his system via various assistant posts across college and pro football.

As the NFL enjoys an explosion of productive offenses, all eyes are on the people who coach quarterbacks and coordinate the passing game. But opportunities in those spaces have been sparse for minority coaches.

According to a study conducted by The Athletic in 2020, since 2013, of all coaching roles with “quarterbacks” or “offensive coordinator” in the title, just 8 percent were filled by minority coaches. And while team owners and league executives have trended toward promoting offensive-minded staff — especially into head-coaching roles — the study also found that minority coaches have been disproportionately concentrated on the defensive side of the ball.

The NFL is currently being sued by former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, now a Steelers assistant, over allegations of discriminatory hiring practices. In 2022, nine teams had to fill their head coaching position and only two hired minority head coaches (Houston’s Lovie Smith, who is Black, and Miami’s Mike McDaniel, who identifies as bi-racial). After Todd Bowles was promoted into the role in Tampa Bay upon the recommendation of Bruce Arians, who retired in late March, there are just six minority head coaches in the NFL in 2022.

Brown is committed to finding solutions. He was among the Rams’ representatives at the NFL’s inaugural diversity seminar at the league’s meetings in Atlanta earlier this summer and presented at the Ozzie Newsome GM/QB coaching summit at the NFL offices in late June. But he recognizes that impactful change needs to happen on a team level, too — not just via the NFL’s attempts at broader league-wide programming.

As the Rams entered the playoffs in 2021, Brown had an initial interview with the Dolphins for their head coaching vacancy, while defensive coordinator Raheem Morris (another viable head coaching candidate on McVay’s staff) had just one interview request through the full hiring period. “It’s a reflection of how far we have to go,” McVay said of Morris this spring, “because he’s one of the best coaches in the world, and the fact that he isn’t a head coach is a crime.”

Brown, who some thought would be a top candidate for the Rams’ offensive coordinator vacancy (previous OC Kevin O’Connell was hired as the Vikings head coach in the spring), was instead moved laterally into the Rams’ tight ends coach role after O’Connell hired former assistant Wes Phillips as his offensive coordinator in Minnesota (a position Brown also interviewed for). McVay hired Liam Coen, a former offensive assistant who was Kentucky’s offensive coordinator in 2021, as OC.

“The more exposure that you get to different spots, the more versatile and the better coach you’re going to become,” said McVay of moving Brown to tight ends coach. “For me, one of the most valuable things that I ever did was coaching the tight ends.”

Like many of the twists and turns in Brown’s coaching journey to this point, the position change was not one he was expecting. Brown has been an offensive coordinator (at the University of Miami from 2016-18) and called plays at the college level — a popular item on executives’ hiring checklists, despite the fact that that NFL head coaches usually retain the majority of play-calling duties on their respective sides of the ball. Further, in every college or pro organization where he has been a running backs coach, Brown discovered that the game-planning meetings for the passing game were largely separated from the run game.

“A lot of times, people will get criticized for what they haven’t been taught and the lack of information being given,” Brown said. “Until you give somebody else the opportunity to learn that same knowledge and give them the tools for problem-solving, then there’s always going to be a lack of growth and a cap on certain people’s ability.”

So as he and McVay mapped out his new position, Brown began to see the new role as an opportunity to challenge himself. What excuse could hiring powers have for not giving Brown, a McVay assistant on a Super Bowl-contending team with his hands now directly on the passing game, a future opportunity? “I felt like it (was) important for him to narrow down the list of ‘cons’ working against him,” said Jessica. “(Brown) being in the room with the pass game, and mastering it, was a no-brainer.”

Brown’s willingness to take on the new role also captured the attention of Rams players. “I think that tells you a lot about who he is, and how comfortable he is with himself as a coach and as a person,” Stafford said. “In the locker room, that resonates with us as players.”

Brown took charge of filling his former position and found 27-year-old Ra’Shaad Samples, a bright offensive assistant who was gaining momentum in the college ranks. Just 15 minutes into his own conversation with Samples, McVay was also sold — and the Rams hired him. Brown also pushed to add quarterbacks coach K.J. Black to the staff as a member of the Bill Walsh minority coaching fellowship.

“We want to create a positive atmosphere that is competitive, where guys are really pushing each other to learn and understand and know more so that we can give better clarity to our players,” said McVay, “inclusivity, ownership, autonomy — all of those things help lead to the culture and connection we’re huntin’ up on the coaching staff.”

By moving into his own new space, Brown also sought to create additional opportunities for promising young minority coaches on the offensive side of the ball. Further, there will be no stopping the information flowing between run-game planning and pass-game planning now, a structural change about which Brown is adamant. “That, to me, is one of the biggest issues,” Brown said. “The lack of information that’s being able to be delivered to everyone who wants the information.”

“‘If I’m in the room — which, I’d better be in the room — then you’re going to have access to whatever I know,’” he told Samples, “Because if you give me access to information, you can get out of my way, you can write a blank check. I’m gonna get whatever I want because I understand what I’m gonna be about, how I’m gonna go about my business work-wise.”

As the McVay/Shanahan offenses continue their momentum as the league’s dominant systems, defenses are adjusting. The Rams remain unique in their understanding of this shift, because they were at the center of it.

The Patriots held the Rams to 3 points in a frustrating Super Bowl LIII loss due in large part to New England installing concepts from the Vic Fangio defensive system after Fangio’s Bears helped outline the earliest defensive blueprint that could beat McVay and his juggernaut offense.

In 2020, McVay hired Fangio disciple and current Chargers head coach Brandon Staley in hopes he could bottle this defense for himself. Simultaneously, and with Brown and O’Connell assisting as two new offensive hires, practicing against it every day allowed the Rams to troubleshoot and eventually evolve their own offense. After the Rams won the Super Bowl last season, the successful pairing has sparked a trend of matching the opposing systems together under one roof, not only to catch the modern schematic wave but also so that coaches could have a “control group” to study both systems.

In addition to the Rams, the teams that will open the 2022 season with McVay/Fangio system pairings include the Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings and perhaps even the Seattle Seahawks, whose head coach, Pete Carroll, led the league’s last major defensive scheme change.

Coaches who understand both sides of the philosophical coin could be of the greatest interest to hiring powers moving forward. Brown, who long ago made a habit of watching all of the Rams’ offensive and defensive cut-ups through each week of practice, is endlessly fascinated by how both sides of the ball have changed and reacted to one another and how those micro-reactions can create league-wide change in scheme and philosophy.

He has opinions — and debates — about the NFL’s current and future schemes, the way rosters will need to change if the league keeps moving toward two-high defenses, how offenses can evolve to counter the second safety in the two-high zone shell so popularized within those defenses and how the financial structure of football itself will only get more creative to allow for this and other major shifts, many for which the Rams have been catalysts.

Brown believes in progressive football, but he also understands how this emerging defense can be beat. It requires egoless play calling; the coach or coordinator must be willing to pick and pick away at the defense in little pieces with a ball-control run game and select the most efficient moments to pass. The coordinator who wants to beat this defense must operate counter to the convention and comfort of the modern explosive passing game and commit to incremental gains without fear or hesitation — and while giving nothing extra away in the process.

It sounds uncomfortable, but Brown believes “you don’t grow in places of comfort.”

Brown’s career is accelerating at the right time. He understands where the league is going and has been a part of shaping its current arc even as he maintains his own individuality and uses his own voice. Wherever he ascends, it won’t simply be because he comes from the McVay system, or because he is now following a preordained path in a league that still hungrily seeks the next McVay.

“I always try to figure out how to add different things to who I am without changing who I am,” he said, “I see Sean do it. He’s the best I’ve been around, by far, in every category.

“I don’t want to be Sean. I’m not trying to be like Sean, and Sean knows that. I couldn’t if I tried.”

Brown’s name continues to come up in coaching and executive circles, and league sources say that multiple team decision-makers have expressed interest in keeping him on their radars ahead of future hiring cycles. Everybody who meets Brown believes he’ll be a head coach someday. Often, and unprompted, they add that when he does get an opportunity, he’ll be there for a decade or longer.

Meanwhile, Brown is focused on preparing the Rams to defend their Super Bowl title, helping to refine their ever-evolving offense as they try to stay ahead of a league that is hunting them.

He and Jessica still sometimes laugh in disbelief. Only a few years ago, the two of them thought they’d be living quietly in the country by now, away from the spotlight and frenetic impermanence of football in which they’ve lived for so long.

But Brown can’t shut off that part of himself that dreams up roster-builds and schematic wrinkles, that studies with and connects to others, that wants to teach and build and grow — and that is perhaps calling him toward something greater in a unique time in the NFL’s schematic and social history.

It can be a complicated feeling when a person realizes they may be meant for more. Some run from their destiny. As always, Brown runs directly at it.