A.J. Brown Comes to Defense of Another Teammate
MIAMI GARDENS - A.J. Brown has said he usually likes to let his play do the talking on the field.
He hasn’t gotten out of character a few times during joint practices, especially last week against the Browns when he made a contested catch against Greedy Williams then stood over Williams and looked down at him after the play.
“Kind of got me out of character because I don’t do much talking out here, I just play my game,” he said during those joint practices. “It was fun going back and forth, going against somebody else for sure in practice…it was cool, though.”
While he may not always taunt on the field, social media is a different story for him.
He defended his friend and quarterback Jalen Hurts when it was reported in July that Hurts was awful in a 10-play series during a springtime OTA.
After Day 1 of joint practices against the Dolphins, Brown was at it again on Twitter, this time defending cornerback Darius Slay.
He bristled at a video clip on that platform showing Tyreek Hill easily getting by Eagles Slay in the very first rep of the team’s first of joint practices against the Dolphins on Wednesday morning.
The play happened in a drill where the receivers go one-on-against the defensive backs, and is naturally tilted inv favor of a WR.
Also, it appeared that Hill stepped on Slay’s foot forcing the Eagles Pro Bowl CB to slow up.
Slay would eventually depart practice, likely because of the foot, and may force him out of Thursday’s practice as well since the Eagles usually like to be cautious with their players, especially valuable ones like Slay.
Anyway, Brown responded on Twitter to that particular clip with a Tweet that read, “Now show us cooking y’all corners.”
Then someone responded by showing Brown beating Dolphins Pro Bowl CB Xavien Howard, who didn’t make it through the whole practice, either, though the reason why is unclear.
Brown certainly had his share of success against Howard and whoever else he lined up against.
There’s no question, however, that the connection from Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa to Hill on the first rep of the joint session set the tone for a day in which Miami seemed to get the better of Philly.
The sparse crowd in attendance roared its approval on the TD.
“That was really nice,” said Tagovailoa about the crowd reaction. “As coach Bev (OC Darrell Bevell) – because me and Tyreek were going back and forth about what route he wanted to run first. He told me any route. I said, ‘what route do you want to run?’
"He said any route. So coach Bev jumped in and said, ‘Hey, I want to hear the crowd cheer.’ So I said, just run a go. So we ran a go route and Tyreek caught the ball, so that was cool.”
For Brown and the Eagles, it wasn’t.
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglesmaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
