I have a real soft spot – and I’m sure a lot of other people, especially in Northeast Ohio, do as well – for Oklahoma right tackle Orlando Brown, one of the players who will be in attendance at the NFL Combine, which will begin on Tuesday and continue for a week at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Yes, before you ask, Brown is indeed the son of the late Orlando Brown, the right tackle who played for the Browns – both the original franchise from 1994-95 and this current one in that expansion season of 1999 – and the Baltimore Ravens.

The younger Brown is a real talent, being rated the No. 16 overall prospect, so he’s expected to be taken in the first round when the NFL Draft is held in about two months.

Interestingly enough, Brown is a 6-foot-8, 350-pounder who, according to scouts, more than makes up for his mediocre quickness with incredible strength. According to sportsillustrated.con, he’ll be a good fit for “an offense that wants to set the tone physically.”

His father, one of the most likeable and colorful players the Browns have ever had, performed at just about that exact size – 6-7 and 350 pounds, give or take 15 or 20 pounds — and was a brute-force mauler, though slow-footed. He was the biggest player in the history of the original Browns. But when he first came to the Browns in 1993 as an obscure rookie free agent from tiny South Carolina State, he was much heavier — an estimated 385 pounds, give or take 15 or 20 pounds.

Jeff Schudel, the longtime Browns beat writer for The News-Herald in Lake County, and I were standing in the locker room at Browns Headquarters in Berea 25 years ago when the club’s rookie free agents trudged past us in a straight line, as if they were marching, a little less than a week after the draft had been held.

They were all shapes and sizes.

Then there was Brown. He towered above all his new teammates. The sight of him made our jaws drop.

Almost in unison, as if we had rehearsed it, Schudel and I looked at each other wide-eyed and exclaimed, “What in the world was that?!”

With all due respect to Brown, our comment was not, “Who in the world was that?,” but rather, “What in the world was that?,’’ simply because of his size. He was the biggest human being I had ever seen – and still is, even to this day. With wide shoulders and a bushy Afro haircut, he looked like a 747 aircraft cruising in for landing.

That was just the start of the Orlando Brown tale with the Browns. We’ll continue it – and that of his son – in our next post.