Positive Renforcement

Before Journey Brown arrived at Penn State for his true freshman year, his eyes were opened by a recruiting visit.

Having verbally committed on the spot a week earlier, Brown, the lone running back in the Nittany Lions’ Class of 2017, took his official visit to University Park the weekend of Jan. 20. At some point during the visit, he headed off with Charles Huff, the team’s running backs coach at the time, for some film study. Pulling up plays from offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead’s system, Huff engaged Brown on the intricacies of some of the Nittany Lions’ running plays.

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“I’m sitting there like, ‘Yeah, yeah. I got you. I got you,'” Brown recalled. “And I had no idea what he was talking about. He was speaking a different language, like Spanish to me.”

Just a few months earlier, Brown had finished his fourth season of football in head coach Ray Collins’ wing-T offense at Meadville High School in northwestern Pennsylvania. He was a first-team Class 5A All-State selection as a senior with 2,791 rushing yards and 51 total touchdowns, helping lead the Bulldogs to the PIAA quarterfinals before losing to West Allegheny. A year earlier, he had set a Pennsylvania single-game rushing record with a 722-yard, 10-touchdown performance, a feat likely to follow Brown through the rest of his playing career.

But none of it truly prepared him for the transition he quickly realized he would have to make now that he was headed to the college level.

Returning home from the visit, Brown attempted to explain to his mother, Buffy, the concepts as Huff had explained them to him. It was a little test of his comprehension and recollection, Brown thought, but the information just wasn’t sticking.

So when he finally arrived on Penn State’s campus in June 2017, he wasn’t any closer to where he wanted to be.

“I just didn’t understand. I just didn’t get the plays,” he said. “When I was in high school, we knew our plays by name. So the coach would tell the receiver, the receiver would run it in, and he would say the play. The signals and formations and all that stuff – I had never, ever seen something like that. I never understood how they even called plays in college. I thought the boards to cover up the signalers from the cameras were the plays. It was just a whole ordeal when I first got up here.”

That ordeal now feels like a lifetime ago to Brown and to the Nittany Lion football program that helped usher him into the current phase of his college career.

Beginning his redshirt sophomore season listed as a co-starter at running back with Ricky Slade, Brown appeared in each of the Nittany Lions’ 12 games during the 2019 regular season. Facing Idaho in the team’s opener, he cashed in with a pair of rushing touchdowns on five carries. Against Pitt, he topped the 100-yard milestone for the first time in his career on just 10 carries. In the second half of the season, with Slade seeing less action and true freshman Noah Cain sidelined due to an injury, Brown seized his opportunity, cracking the century mark three times in Penn State’s last four games. None of those performances were more impactful than his 103 yards and three scores on just 16 attempts in a sluggish 27-6 win against Rutgers on Nov. 30 at Beaver Stadium.

With those performances, Brown propelled himself to the top of Penn State’s rushing chart for the regular season, compiling 688 yards and 10 touchdowns on 113 attempts to go along with 13 receptions for 127 yards and another score. His average of 6.1 yards per carry hinted at his big-play capabilities, and so did the six touchdowns that he scored on explosive plays. Two were runs of 18 yards apiece, and he also had scoring runs of 23, 35 and 45 yards, as well as a 37-yard receiving TD.

Brown always suspected he had that kind of potential, but he knows that some others weren’t so certain.

“I definitely can tell you they didn’t think I was going to turn out the way I am right now, for sure,” Brown said. “When I first got here, I knew I had believers, but I also knew I had 50/50-type guys. That’s how it is sometimes. And I almost felt that way about myself, but my family backed me up and they told me I could do it and I started believing in myself. I started listening to the people that had my back from the jump and kept me pushing.”

Tightly connected to his family, Brown received constant encouragement from his inner circle. But it also came from within the program – from his teammates, from strength coaches Dwight Galt and Chuck Losey, from Moorhead, from some of the defensive coaches who saw him compete as a scout team performer, from head coach James Franklin, and from the team’s director of player development, Will Flaherty. They all urged him to push past his frustrations, insisting that with time and consistent effort, success would come.

By the end of his freshman year, that determination had started to pay off for him, as others within the program took notice.

“He’s made a very big jump,” Miles Sanders told reporters after the 2018 Blue-White Game. “One thing he has to work on is just getting the playbook. Once he learns the playbook, I think he’ll probably play a big role in this offense. Him being young and being on a scout team played a big part in him not knowing the playbook, but once he learns [it] and has that down, I think he’ll have a significant role in this offense.”

Now that he’s starting to reap the rewards he envisioned, Brown is convinced that an even brighter future lies ahead – for himself and for the Nittany Lions. Both his mother and his position coach, Ja’Juan Seider, have worked to reinforce his confidence. When you step on the field, they’ve told him, you’re the best player on it. Brown intends prove it with every opportunity he earns.

“I just always try to make sure that I know that I can do it. I’m supposed to be here. If I wasn’t supposed to be here, I wouldn’t be here,” Brown said. “When I first got here, in my own head, I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here, and that’s the truth.”

Brown believes that his gradual path to this year’s successes has been purposeful, pitfalls and struggles included, and he is eyeing the future with optimism. His goal?

“To prove to people what I know, that I’m the best running back, and then just work every day for that,” Brown said. “Work and strive not to be the best running back for them, but to be the best running back that I can be in the eyes of my peers, my coaches and my family. ... I know that I’ll definitely put in the work and put in the energy to do my best and be the best running back I can be.”