Eagles’ A.J. Brown nearly picked baseball over football

A.J. Brown’s sixth season in the NFL was likely his most memorable. The All-Pro wide receiver delivered a third consecutive 1,000-yard season and was a key part of the Philadelphia Eagles’ run to a Super Bowl title.

Before making the leap to the NFL, Brown finished with just under 3,000 receiving yards with the Ole Miss Rebels during his time as a college football star. 

While Brown has become one of the best players in his sport, there was a time when he contemplated a different path.

The three-time Pro Bowler excelled at football and baseball at Starkville High in Mississippi. He also played in the 2015 Under Armour High School All-America Baseball Game. 

Brown admitted he was alarmed by the hard-throwing abilities of pitchers competing in that game, which led to his decision to pursue football. 

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“I’ll tell you when I made the decision to play football. I’m in right field. I’m in the All-America game in Chicago. The first was like 97 (mph) — 97 off the rip? I’m usually facing like 85,” Brown explained during a recent appearance on the “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast.

“We still in high school, though. So, these are all high school players, and these guys are probably gonna go first round. I see him throwing an off-speed pitch, and it’s like a 90-mph breaking ball. I’m gonna see if I can go over here and hit this.”

Brown did draw interest from MLB teams, and the San Diego Padres drafted him in one of the later rounds in 2016. Brown, however, elected to attend college in his native Mississippi and take the football route. Brown earned first-team All-SEC honors twice during his standout career at Ole Miss.

Earlier this month, Padres area scout Stephen Moritz recalled scouting Brown a decade ago and seeing his elite athleticism.

“You’re never certain,” Moritz told MLB.com. “As scouts, you’re wrong more often than you’re right. But I was as certain as I could be [that] he was going to be a good outfielder. He was going to be great in the outfield. There was too much athleticism. There was natural ability. You add all his tools together, that was the one thing I was pretty confident in. This dude is going to be a good outfielder in the big leagues.”

In 2020, Brown detailed how baseball helped mold him into the football player he is today.

“You catch the ball with your eyes,” Brown told ESPN. “Baseball really helped me out with that for football. When you’re tracking a ball, especially a deep ball, it helped me a lot. I played center field in baseball. On a deep pass in football, you judge it and track it just like a center fielder.”

The Tennessee Titans selected Brown in the second round of the 2019 NFL Draft and traded him to the Eagles during the 2022 NFL Draft.

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