Flames find a new leader in quarterback Mike Brown

Liberty coach Danny Rocco first saw it on a recruiting trip to Monticello High School, but he didn’t see it on a football field. It was the dead of winter, and Mike Brown was in Monticello’s gym at basketball practice. Brown didn’t have a future in basketball. He was mulling three FCS football scholarship offers, so it could be forgiven if Brown chose to slack off during the hoops season.

“I watched him practice basketball, and I was amazed at how hard he played, and how much energy he brought to the team,” Rocco said. “That was probably the first time I began to say that this guy might be special.”

Since then, the statistics, the results, the plays Brown has made … all that speaks for itself. But what stands out the most about Brown is his ability to lead a young football team at a precocious age. Only a redshirt sophomore, Brown commands the respect of his teammates as if he were a fifth-year senior with playoff experience. But trying to put a finger on just where that comes from is difficult, even for teammates awestruck by the numbers he’s compiled in Liberty’s first three games this season.

“We were kind of wondering how that would work out, with him being such a young guy,” said Liberty guard Bryan Mosier, a senior who is one of Liberty’s three offensive captains, along with Brown and tackle Josh Weaver.

Since Rocco has been Liberty’s coach, only two sophomores have been voted team captains — Brown and Rashad Jennings. Brown took a lot of his leadership cues from the former Flames tailback, who is now with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, and he said he learned a lot about leadership from his former Monticello teammate, Joe Sanford, who is now a receiver at Massachusetts. It’s not about ranting and raving, screaming to fire up your teammates. The coaches do enough of that. It’s about inspiring confidence through actions, and in the last three weeks, Brown has done that in starkly different ways.

w At West Virginia, facing an FBS opponent in the season opener with a nearly brand new group of receivers and a quarterback who had been running Liberty’s system for only a month, Brown found a way to take over. He set the tone for the offense by returning West Virginia’s first kickoff into Mountaineer territory. He caught 11 passes, ran for a touchdown and caught a touchdown pass.

w Against North Carolina Central, Brown started at receiver but quickly switched to quarterback when Tommy Beecher went down with a mild concussion. Brown hadn’t worked with the first-team offense as a quarterback since early in training camp, so some rust would show, right? Hardly. He completed 10 of 12 passes and threw a touchdown pass to Dominique Jones, and he ran for a score.

w Then, with a week of working with the No. 1 offense at quarterback under his belt, Brown took over at Lafayette last Saturday, leading the Flames to a 19-13 victory. He completed 29 of 36 passes, leaving his season completion percentage at a ridiculous 81.2 percent. In all, Brown has accounted for 616 yards of offense this season, 62.3 percent of Liberty’s total output in three games.

“He’s been miraculous,” Rocco said.

What’s been more impressive is that the hot start has not changed Brown’s persona. Certainly, he operates with an air of confidence, but it’s not arrogance. He handles media requests with aplomb and continually impresses his teammates with his drive to improve. Mosier said Brown watches more film than most players on the team, not surprising considering he plays a major role in Liberty’s pass game at a QB and as a receiver, and is a key member of the Flames’ special teams.

He rarely gets visibly frustrated, and when he does, it’s with himself, not his teammates.

“We see it in practice,” Mosier said. “If he does something wrong, he’ll take the blame for it. He’ll man up and take it. That’s really awesome for a young player to do that. It’s so easy to put the blame on someone else, to say, oh, the receiver didn’t catch the ball. But he takes it all, and says, ‘my bad, my bad, I’ll fix it next time.’”

Brown’s leadership is most evident with members of his own class. Redshirt sophomore wide receiver Chris Summers is a perfect example. Brown has talked Summers up publicly since spring practice, trying to plant a seed of confidence in his mind. When Summers dropped a pass in practice in August, Brown’s response wasn’t to roll his eyes or to yell at the receiver. Instead, he firmly told Summers to be ready, because the ball would be coming his way again.

Last week, Summers had a breakout game, nearly tripling his career reception total by hauling in 14 passes against Lafayette.

“I don’t see him as a sophomore,” Summers said. “I see him as a senior already, with the way he acts and the way he carries himself.”

Brown’s quick maturity in this role can’t be overstated, considering what the Flames lost from last year’s team.

The loss of physical talent hurt, for sure. But of more concern was who would emerge from a new group to fill the calming roles that Jennings, Brock Smith and Mike Godsil filled.

It’s clear that Brown has accepted that challenge, and thrived.

“Rashad was probably one of the biggest influences,” Brown said. “Every time I saw Rashad, he was working hard, doing something to get better. He was doing something around the school, helping people out, both on and off the field.

“I was just thinking to myself, I want to be that guy, when every time you see him, he’s doing something right.”