Enough about the rising pro football players from around here. What about the rising pro football executives?
Hampton's Morocco Brown tried, but never got to join that first demographic after failed auditions with the Pittsburgh Steelers and in Canada. So he aggressively pursued a home in the equally competitive and exhausting front-office cauldron.
It turns out tackling NFL personnel matters rather than NFL ballcarriers can be a dream job, too.
'That's my ultimate goal, to run my own team,' said Brown, 34, a former linebacker at North Carolina State who's entering his third season as the Washington Redskins director of pro personnel.
'I didn't want to coach; too much moving, the hours are kind of crazy, not that I wouldn't have done it. But when I heard the breakdown of scouting, it just sounded intriguing. So I said let me at least beat the bushes and see what comes out of it.'
A wise choice. Then again, Brown is fast becoming known for nimble judgment as much as the persistence that founded his decade-long climb into general manager discussions.
In the beginning, Brown said he sent resumes to every NFL team 10 different times to land one internship offer, with the Indianapolis Colts. Yet last year, he interviewed for Washington's general manager's job that went to NFL long-timer Bruce Allen.
'I felt like it was a serious look, but either way I chalk that up to experience,' said Brown, a Kecoughtan High grad - his brother coaches basketball at Mount St. Mary's - who was recently home to help at a Peninsula youth football camp.
'I got to see how that process worked. But what I've found is if you just keep working and you do your job well, people will find you. You don't have to self-promote, just do your work. So before I start talking about GM this or GM that, I need to just master being a pro director first.'
Brown got here by turning contacts into a Redskins internship in '99 and then initiative into a promising slot as the Chicago Bears assistant director of pro personnel in 2001. Seven seasons of tooth-cutting in Chicago bought Brown's ticket back to Washington in '08 to oversee the evaluation, essentially, of every North American pro on two legs.
That is, if a guy's cashing a check from playing football - and even if he recently used to -- Brown and his staff of two scouts and a couple of interns better have a full report on him within a mouse-click of Allen and head coach Mike Shanahan.
Brown, whose big future has been endorsed by former colleagues in Chicago and Washington, doesn't make final calls on which elite free agents to chase to which practice squadders to pluck away from other teams to which unemployed tight ends to bring in for emergency workouts.
But those decisions are built on Brown's collected bodies of evidence. That requires a confident eye for detail, and pretty much more hours than are presently in a day.
'It's a ton of work,' said Brown, who will personally scout all the preseason games of the Dallas Cowboys, Washington's opening opponent. During the regular season, Brown has NFC East foes the week before they play the Redskins; his staff will appraise the rosters of every other team.
Printed reports on the pending opponent will land on every important desk at Redskins Park every Tuesday morning. And so far, Brown's insights have been valid enough that he's been left to grind away uninterrupted through the powerful Allen-Shanahan transition.
'Over time, they're gonna know whether you know enough, and if you don't, you know you won't be there,' Brown said. 'They're not gonna triple-check every free-agent list I come up with. But you better believe if somebody's missing off there they'll be like, 'What about Karlos Dansby, how come he's not on here?' 'Oh, I forgot ...'
Brown laughed at that shudder-worthy thought.
'Uh, no, you can't do that,' Brown said.
'I don't know if people understand the inner workings of the NFL, and how you do a roster and keep up with the turnover, but it's like a machine, and everybody has their part to do. You really just have to put the blinders on and go do what you have to do.'
Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com
