A FORMER BROWN NAMED BROWN IS BACK IN THE GAME
By Steve King
One of the nicest players in Browns history, along with being one of the most media-friendly and one of the most colorful, is back in the NFL on full-time basis.
Lomas Brown, who did all those things despite playing just one season here as the left tackle on the 1999 expansion Browns, has been hired as the color analyst on Detroit Lions radio broadcasts on 50,000-watt, clear-channel WJR (760 AM) in Detroit, which comes in loud and clear in Northeast Ohio.
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Brown, now 55 years old, replaces Jim Brandstatter, who shockingly – even the Lions didn’t know it was coming — was let go on Tuesday after spending 31 years covering Lions games, most of them as the color analyst. A former University of Michigan offensive lineman, he also is the play-by-play announcer for Wolverines football. He will continue in that role.
The color analyst on UM games, incidentally, is Pro Football Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf, a Canton Glenwood (now GlenOak) High School graduate and former offensive tackle for the St. Louis (now Arizona) Cardinals.
Brown is not a broadcast novice, having spent time with NFL Network and ESPNEWS as an analyst, and is currently an analyst on ESPN First Take and co-hosts a sports talk radio show for WXYT-FM in Detroit.
Brown spent the first 11 years of his 18 NFL seasons with the Lions and remains a popular figure in that town. WJR officials are keeping pretty mum on the big move in the booth, saying only that the addition of Brown, a seven-time Pro Bowler, “should offer a unique perspective.”
My guess – and it’s only a guess – is this: The population of Detroit is heavily African-American, and Brown, in that he is African-American, a former Lions standout who is popular in the area and has media experience, is a perfect fit. Putting Brown in the booth adds diversity to the Lions radio booth and gives the broadcast team a person of color to better reflect the WJR listening audience.I can’t believe it’s any more complicated than that.
In any event, Brown is back, and that’s good news, even though Brandstatter didn’t deserve to be treated so shabbily.
THE LOWDOWN WITH LO BROWN
NFL press conferences often have all the pomp and circumstance of a White House presser.
That’s way, way too formal for football – world security, perhaps, but not football.
Lomas Brown thought so, too, and late in 1999, the only season the left tackle played with the Browns, he did something about it.
It had been raining – hard – all day in Cincinnati on Dec. 12 as the Browns and Bengals played their last game against one another at leaky Riverfront Stadium, a horrible place. Beautiful Paul Brown Stadium would open the following season.
Neither the Bengals nor the Browns were in playoff contention – both their seasons had ended, for all intents and purposes, weeks before – and so this one was just for fun. And it wasn’t any fun at all for the Browns, who were in the midst of a six-game, season-ending winning streak and got blasted 44-28. They fell to 2-12 on their way to a then franchise-record 2-14 finish.
This was about 20 months before 9/11, so media members were still allowed down onto the field for the last two minutes of games to give them easier access to the locker rooms and the press conference rooms. But with the weather, the Cleveland reporters were standing underneath the stands in the runway leading to the locker rooms as Brown, being helped off the field after suffering a knee injury, hobbled his way right past them.
Taking full advantage of the opportunity – Brown was great with the media, and way too chatty for the tastes of Browns head coach Chris Palmer, who had worked under no-nonsense, hard-on-the-media coaches in Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin – reporters walked alongside and conducted an impromptu presser with him about his injury.
“How bad is it, Lomas?”
“Oh, real bad, I’m afraid.”
“Do you think you tore your ACL?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did.”
“Too bad, Lomas. Take care of yourself. Get better.”
“Thanks, guys.”
I’ve been doing this a long time, but I’ve never interviewed an injured player as he was leaving the field right after getting hurt. I don’t think many reporters have. It’s just not the way things like that are done in sports on any level.
As such, I’m sure that Palmer, who never tried to hide the fact that he wasn’t really a Brown fan, was just thrilled to death about the tackle being so open and honest about an injury – especially without talking to him first.
Brown, who was hired Tuesday as the color analyst on Detroit Lions radio broadcasts, had a radio show in Cleveland, “The Lowdown with Lo Brown.”
That’s an appropriate name for what happened that day 18½ years ago.
EASY TO FIGURE OUT WHY LOMAS BROWN HIRED FOR LIONS RADIO
It was shocking that the Detroit Lions last Tuesday fired Jim Brandstatter as the color analyst for the radio broadcasts and replaced him with former Browns left tackle Lomas Brown.
No one saw it coming. Brandstatter had been on the broadcasts for 31 years, mostly as the color analyst.
But what is just as shocking – perhaps even more so, actually – is that no one in the Motor City can figure out why the change was made.
Really?
It’s pretty easy to see the reasons.
Although Brandstatter was a lineman at the University of Michigan on Barberton native Bo Schembechler’s first teams there, he never played in the NFL. Brown, on the other hand, played in the league for 18 seasons, the first 11 of which were with the Lions, who chose him in the first round, at No. 6 overall, in the 1985 NFL Draft out of Florida.
Both on radio and TV, having a former NFL player as a color analyst for NFL games is all the rage now. Nearly every franchise’s radio team has one on its radio broadcasts. That includes the Browns, where former left tackle Doug Dieken, who played 14 seasons in Cleveland, began in 1985, the year after his retirement, as the radio color analyst. The 2018 season will be his 31st on the job.
Yes, former offensive linemen are popular choices as color analysts, especially in radio.
But whatever position they played, the fact they played in the NFL gives color analysts instant credibility with their audiences. They are perceived to know what they’re talking about. It’s the “Been there, done that” aspect.
Like Dieken, Brown is very popular in the market in which he works. Brown, who played just that one season, 1999, in Cleveland, settled in Detroit after his retirement following the 2002 season. He has worked on and off in the Detroit and national sports media since then. He speaks well – and in complete sentences – and laughs easily. And, as mentioned, he knows the game inside and out.
And, as I pointed out in a previous post, Brown is African-American in a city, Detroit, that is heavily so.
Plus, at 55, he’s 13 years younger than Brandstatter. That makes him fresher and cooler, especially with younger fans.
Absolutely, WJR-AM, the radio flagship for the Lions, did a horrific job with the public relations of the move, but understanding why it was made is hardly a mystery.
MAKING A CASE FOR LOMAS BROWN FOR HOF CONSIDERATION
I never thought of ex-Browns left tackle Lomas Brown as a Pro Football of Famer.
But after reviewing his bio following his being hired last Tuesday as the color analyst for Detroit Lions radio broadcasts, Brown certainly has the credentials to at least be considered by the HOF Selection Committee’s Veterans Committee.
Brown played 18 seasons, from 1985 through 2002, the first 11 years of which were spent with Lions after they selected him in the first round, at No. 6 overall, in the 1985 NFL Draft. He played with the Arizona Cardinals from 1996-98, the Browns in their 1999 expansion season, the Giants in 2000 (when he made his first Super Bowl appearance in a losing effort) and ’01, and then in 2002, when he was a member of the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers before retiring.
Most people who know of Brown, are aware of all of that. But what they not be aware of – I know I wasn’t – is what he accomplished individually.
He made the Pro Bowl seven straight times in his final seasons with the Lions, 1990-96, during which they made the playoffs on four occasions. Seven times is a lot. There are any number of players in the HOF who do not have that many trips to the Pro Bowl.
Brown was first-team All-Pro three times, and a second-team selection three times. He also was a first-team All-NFC selection in four seasons.
He was an ironman, too, starting 251 of the 263 games in which he played. He missed 25 contests in his nearly two decades in the league.
I think Brown, now 55, enjoyed a pretty impressive career. The fact his name doesn’t come up in HOF voting circles is disappointing. But these things are highly politicized, which, again, is disappointing. However, it isn’t going to change anytime soon, especially now with his fate in the hands of the Veterans Committee, which is the most politicized group of the whole selection process.
More HOF talk – but on different ex-Browns – is coming in my next post.
