Gaining Ground
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Everything about Journey Brown – his football resume, his track accomplishments, his name – suggests momentum.
This was a guy who once rushed for more than 700 yards in a single high school football game. A guy who once covered 100 meters faster than any sprinter in the history of Pennsylvania scholastic track, breaking a record that had been held by future Olympic gold medalist Leroy Burrell. A guy whose name is Journey. What could be more appropriate than a name like Journey? Journeys connote distances, and distances connote first downs. If you’re a running back, especially at a school that takes great pride in its long tailback lineage, you could do a lot worse than to make that sort of subconscious connection.
And yet, during his first two seasons on Penn State’s campus, Brown didn’t feel like he was getting anywhere. It was understood that he wouldn’t simply show up and parlay his blazing speed into an immediate role in the backfield. He would have to wait his turn, and even then, speed alone wasn’t going to propel him into the starting lineup.
But even though he went into his college career with his eyes open, the transition was difficult. Penn State’s system was very different from the wing-T offense in which he had excelled at Meadville (Pa.) High, and as he attempted to master it, he found himself developing some bad mental habits. Brown had a tendency to dwell on personal and academic problems, to the point where they became football problems, too.
“It would let it clog my brain,” he said. “In high school, football was my escape. I always used football to get away from my off-the-field challenges. I feel like I kind of lost that [at Penn State]. It was more of a business-type thing. I wasn’t having as much fun. I was dwelling on stuff on the field… and I wasn’t satisfied with my play.”
Brown redshirted his first year, then found himself playing behind a younger running back in 2018, as four-star freshman Ricky Slade leaped past him into the backup role behind starter Miles Sanders. Two years into his college career, Brown wasn’t on the fast track that he had hoped would lead to more playing time, and he knew that it was his mental outlook that was holding him back.
Eventually, that outlook changed. But it wasn’t the arrangement of the depth chart that caused him to re-examine his approach to the game. It was a personal loss – the death of his grandmother.
“When she passed away, I really locked in,” Brown said. “Everything I did was for my grandma, so I guess you could say when she passed away, I was like, ‘What am I doing? Who do I want to be with this?’ I would always hear her voice in my head, and I started to learn how to be confident in myself, because she always gave me that confidence.”
As he prepares for his redshirt sophomore season at Penn State, Brown has used that newfound confidence to regain the momentum that had dissipated while he was waiting his turn behind Saquon Barkley and Sanders. He’s listed at 206 pounds this spring, 12 pounds above his weight when he arrived at PSU, and yet he’s still blazing fast.
He’s also developed a better understanding of the full range of his responsibilities in the Lions’ offense. The key, he said, is that he’s figured out how to compartmentalize. That’s meant “separating my off-the-field stuff and not letting it mess up my brain on the field so that I can focus on one thing and not try to eat an elephant in one bite, [but instead] kind of chop it up in pieces.”
Coaches and teammates have praised Brown’s development this spring, citing him as one of the foremost members of a group of underclassmen who are set to make a big impact in 2019.
“There are a lot of things going right for Journey right now,” coach James Franklin said. “He’s confident, he’s becoming a leader, he’s had an unbelievable off-season. He’s always been extremely gifted. Last year he ran a 4.3 for us and pulled his hamstring while running the 40 and missed a lot of spring ball because of it. But the light seems to be coming on for him. It’s never been a physical thing. It’s been a confidence thing, an assignment thing – not only with our offense but also with defensive recognition for blitz pickup and things like that. He’s doing some really nice things.”
Added running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider, “Journey has really been a pleasant surprise. He’s taken the next step. He can make us different. His speed is game-changing. When he learns to trust himself as a player, he can be special.”
Brown’s ascent is likely to be a key factor in Penn State’s efforts to remake its backfield following the loss of last year’s top two rushers, Sanders and Trace McSorley. Those two combined to gain 2,072 yards last season, 78 percent of the team’s total of 2,664 rushing yards. They also scored 21 of the Nittany Lions’ 34 rushing touchdowns.
It’s unlikely that the Lions’ next quarterback will be as productive on the ground as McSorley, whose 1,697 career rushing yards are the most by a QB in the program’s history. But they will undoubtedly be looking for their running backs to approximate Sanders’ numbers, and maybe even improve on them given the depth that the team has been building ever since Barkley began catching the eye of would-be tailback recruits. In addition to Brown and Slade, both of whom will have sophomore eligibility this coming season, they have three newcomers set to see their first carries this year: true freshmen Noah Cain and Devyn Ford and Notre Dame transfer C.J. Holmes.
Except for Ford, who has yet to arrive on campus, all of those ball carriers saw action in the Blue-White Game. If there was a breakout star, it was Cain, who played for both teams and finished with 45 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries. He also caught an 8-yard touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter.
Franklin had said earlier in the spring that Slade and Brown, the most experienced of the team’s running backs, had created some separation between themselves and the newcomers. And while that may have been the case, the 5-10, 209-pound Cain sure looked like he was catching up fast in the spring game. He appears to have the strength to be a bruising between-the-tackles runner, and the hands to be a receiving threat coming out of the backfield. Franklin said afterward he was impressed with the decisiveness Cain showed in his first appearance in Beaver Stadium. “He stuck his foot in the ground and got downhill. A lot of times his runs aren’t overly sexy, but he’s just breaking tackles and falling forward and is very productive,” Franklin said. “He had 41 yards, a 5.1-yard average [for the White] – pretty good. And he did a lot of that with the second O-line against the [first-team] D. I thought that was impressive.”
Slade and Brown didn’t see quite as much action, combining for 20 yards on seven carries. But Slade also caught three passes for 20 yards, showing the kind of receiving potential that Penn State frequently exploited when Barkley was in the backfield but didn’t use nearly so often last year with Sanders in that same role.
Slade said that between them, Penn State’s running backs possess a range of abilities that could make them all valuable contributors this coming fall. “We have a whole lot of different skills back there – Journey with his speed and Noah with his power. It’s interesting, but a good dynamic to have,” said Slade, who was third on the team in rushing with 257 yards last season. “I see myself as a little bit of both, I guess. I’d say I see myself as equal parts speed, power and quickness.”
Brown is coming off a redshirt freshman season in which he carried eight times for 44 yards. He saw relatively little action as the Lions’ third-team running back, tying wideout K.J. Hamler for seventh on the team in rushing yardage. But four of the six players ahead of him are now gone, and the chance to show his potential has arrived. Brown is eager to see where his momentum carries him.
“We have a lot of talented backs, and I feel like we all complement each other’s games,” he said. “At this point, it seems like it’s going to be a share-the-load kind of thing we have going from a running back standpoint, but I’ll feel very comfortable wherever I fit in. I’ll be happy with my role, whatever I need to do to help the team win. I’ll be comfortable wherever they put me, and I’ll keep doing my best. If that means I’m the starter, then I’m the starter. If that means I need to come in on third-and-short, that’s what I’ll do. Whatever the teams needs.”
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What else is in the latest issue of Blue White Illustrated's magazine? Let's take a closer look at some of the feature stories from our latest magazine, here!
THE RUNDOWN:
FOOTBALL - Journey Brown leads the way in a spring football wrap-up section packed with stories and information from the Nittany Lions coming out of their spring practice session. From Tommy Stevens' departure to the ascent of Sean Clifford at quarterback, plus walk-on-turned-scholarship receiver Dan Chisena, the offensive line, Micah Parsons and more, you won't want to miss this issue.
PHIL'S CORNER - BWI publisher Phil Grosz takes a look at the underclassmen shaping up to play a big role in Penn State's successes on both sides of the field this season. Plus, Phil's post-spring depth chart.
RECRUITING - As always, BWI recruiting analyst Ryan Snyder has your Penn State football recruiting fix. In this issue, he recaps some of the big visitors on campus this spring, has an updated Hot List for the Class of 2020 and a complete position-by-position breakdown of how Penn State's Class of 2020 figures to shape up, and goes Up Close and Personal with incoming prospects Joey Porter Jr., Lance Dixon, and quarterback Ta'Quan Roberson.
HOOPS - BWI men's basketball beat writer Nate Bauer updates the latest with the Nittany Lions as their roster experiences attrition and a welcomed return from Mike Watkins.
And these are just a few of the many stories and features that come with every edition of Blue White Illustrated's magazine, including Varsity Views, a special feature from Penn State historian and BWI contributor Lou Prato, and more!