Former UK, U of L soccer player looks to finish improbable path to NFL

Fletcher Page | Courier Journal

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CINCINNATI — The first time Jonathan Brown kicked a football demonstrated both his potential and the challenge he faced.

Months after parting ways with the University of Louisville soccer team, Brown drove four-and-a-half hours in spring of 2014 from his home in Clinton, Mississippi, for a training session with Brett Baer in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Before offering any advice, Baer, who briefly spent time with the St. Louis Rams, asked Brown to try a field goal to gauge what he could do.

Brown backed nearly 15 yards away from the teed-up ball before Baer stopped him.

"We had to start from step one," Baer said, "and I had to kind of explain to him what a field goal was."

After a chat about the basics, Brown took three steps back, two over and then kicked for the first time.

"I was like, 'Holy crap, man,'" Baer said. "He just crushed it. Just the most powerful kick that I've ever seen, the way the ball exploded off his foot."

'Flip the switch'

Jonathan Brown grinned as he admitted he shouldn't be in this position.

He's never kicked a field goal or extra point in a football game. Not in the NFL. Not in college or high school, either.

But he's here, just five years after giving up soccer and first taking aim between the uprights and over the crossbar, in contention to be the Cincinnati Bengals starting kicker.

"It doesn't make sense what I'm doing," said Brown on the first day of Bengals' training camp last month. "All the odds were against me, but I knew God wasn't going to lead me wrong."

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That Brown can launch an object into the distance with his right leg and foot isn't surprising. He began playing soccer at age 4 and developed into one of the premier teenage players in the country.

He was a member of the United States' men's U-17 national team and chose to attend the University of Kentucky after netting 38 goals in three high school seasons.

Despite starting four games and taking two shots on goal as a freshman, Brown said he felt moved to play both soccer and football (he starred as a wide receiver and kick returner at Clinton High) in college. And he wasn't going to stay at Kentucky in that scenario.

"I'm not trying to bash UK, but they're not known for their football," he said.

So he left for rival Louisville, where Cardinals soccer coach Ken Lolla said Brown could have thrived.

"His first goal that he scored here, he turned from about 25 yards to the goal and the keeper just couldn’t get to it," Lolla said. "It is that raw athleticism and strength that got us intrigued and interested."

But after one season, the overlapping schedules of soccer and football made it impossible for Brown to pursue double duty. After thinking it over with his family, Brown didn't return to campus for spring semester, opting instead for online classes and nine-hour round trips each Saturday to work with Baer.

"He literally had no idea about the technique to kick a football," said Baer, who kicked for Louisiana in college. "He was just like, 'Yeah, I think I'll give it a shot.' For him to be able to flip the switch like that, nowadays, it just doesn't happen."

With his technique improved and a highlight film in hand, Brown returned to Louisville in May and slept on a friend's couch waiting for the Cardinals football coaching staff to evaluate the tape.

Brown earned an invite to summer workouts entering his junior year.

"I told him, 'If you really focus on this you can be something special,'" Baer said. "He's so coachable. Anything you told him, he was able to adapt and able to do it, boom, the next rep."

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He made the team, but playing time was hard to come by.

Louisville already had a proven kicker in John Wallace, an eventual four-year starter who made nearly 80 percent of his field goals. That relegated Brown to seven kickoffs as a junior and just one before an oblique injury ended his senior season after only three games.

"Obviously it was frustrating," Brown said. "I was walking with my faith there because everybody was like, 'Why would you give up soccer? You've never kicked before in your life.'"

It appeared Brown's time was up when his application for a medical redshirt was not approved. He was out of eligibility and had no experience to advertise to NFL teams.

Brown called his mom, Jetuwan Brown, and asked: "What am I supposed to do?"

She admits she felt doubt, but she offered encouragement and tough love.

"I had to be strong for him and not let him get to that pity party or sorrow," she said. "It wasn't easy. Sometimes I wanted to say, 'Lord what's really going on here?'"

'Get what he wanted'

Jetuwan and Cleveland Brown had seen their son's faith in action before.

When Jonathan Brown was 6, he asked his mother for a baby sister.

"We only want you," she replied. "We're going to give you all of our love, all the toys, just everything to you."

Jonathan said he didn't want that. So he "looked up to heaven and he said, 'Lord, please put a baby in momma's stomach and let it be a girl,'" Jetuwan said.

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Despite being on birth control, Jetuwan said she found out a month later she was pregnant. An ultrasound revealed later the Browns were having a girl. Everybody in the family was surprised, except for Jonathan, who maintained he knew what would happen all along.

"His faith was so strong," she said. "And he knew he was going to get what he wanted."

'A chance to make history'

Jonathan Brown had two weeks to prepare for Louisville Pro Day in spring of 2016 after his medical redshirt was denied.

His mentality was "to just go for it," he said.

"Anybody else wouldn't want to go out there and embarrass themselves," Baer said. "It's intimidating, but he's all in. He just wanted an opportunity to prove himself. He's not afraid to fail and he never has been."

Less than an hour after Brown worked out for NFL evaluators, Cincinnati Bengals scout Andrew Johnson reached out.

Jetuwan thought it was a joke.

"I told Jonathan that it was really cruel that his friends would call him and play a prank like that," she said. "But come to find out it was really the Bengals."

The Bengals invited Brown to rookie minicamp and signed him as an undrafted free agent. He didn't make the roster in 2016 or last season, but he entered training camp in July with Randy Bullock as the only two kickers competing for the starting job.

Bullock, an eight-year veteran, is the favorite after he made 18 of 20 field goal attempts for the Bengals last season. Still, Brown said the decision to include him in a two-player competition is a sign of his improvement.

"The coaches actually tell me I look like a kicker now," he said. "When I first got here they said I had a really strong leg, but I didn't actually look like a kicker with how I carried myself and how I swung through the ball."

Baer calls Brown a "super competitor," and says his leg strength and talent forced Cincinnati to invest time, money and energy into Brown's development.

"The only thing he doesn't have and has never had is experience," Baer said. "I'm sure the coaches are wondering, 'what is this guy going to be like when he gets on the field?'"

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That question could be answered Thursday when the Bengals host the Chicago Bears in the preseason opener. Brown said he won't be nervous if his name is called to kick a field goal. That's not a finish line, he said, but it will represent a milestone.

He said he wants to join Gene Mingo, Cedric Oglesby, Donald Igwebuike and Justin Medlock as the only black kickers to make a field goal in a regular-season game.

Envisioning that moment, like charting the dots on his way to this position, made Brown smile.

"Now I have a chance to make history," he said. "I wouldn't change a thing. I'm glad I didn't kick a field goal in college. It makes it that much sweeter."

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