Jason Brown is used to flying under radar. Now at South Carolina, everyone’s watching
Former South Carolina recruiting assistant Stephen Wise glared at a YouTube highlight tape in January with a sense of wonderment.
The quarterback from an FCS school in central Pennsylvania he’d never heard of had the look of a legitimate prospect. But there was no well-manicured cut-up of the kid on the screen, nor any discernible interest from other FBS schools.
Then-St. Francis defensive coordinator Marco Pecora felt the same sense of confusion when he spotted the quarterback on Wise’s computer as a prep school standout in the class of 2017.
Chancellor High School offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach JP Gibbons, too, was befuddled when major-conference schools sniffed around his signal-caller but never offered.
Why was no one looking at Jason Brown?
“When we were going through his recruiting process — which started right after his sophomore year — I sat down with our other coaches that were committed to taking him all over the the Mid-Atlantic (for camps) and I said, ‘Look, in my time doing this, if kid is not a Division I quarterback, I don’t know who is,’ ” Gibbons told the State. “We were just shocked. No school could really give us a reason as to why he wasn’t higher on their board.”
Brown has since come out of the shadow of unfortunate recruiting luck and small-school stardom. He guided South Carolina to a statement win over Florida two weeks ago. Head coach Shane Beamer said Tuesday he’ll be USC’s starter when it takes on Auburn this weekend.
Finally, people are paying attention.
“I can’t even put into words how I feel right now,” Brown said after the Florida game. “It’s just an unreal feeling. Just think about it: I was a third-team guy for a while, and I just kept preparing as though I was the starter.”
Under-recruited out of Virginia
Gibbons sat in the bleachers at Cole Fieldhouse on Maryland’s campus in the summer of 2015.
Brown stood with a handful of other prospects down on the playing surface. Alongside him was four-star quarterback and eventual first-round NFL draft pick Dwayne Haskins.
Haskins had it all: the rocket arm, the size, the maneuverability. He was a top-100 prospect and the No. 7 pro-style quarterback in the class of 2016, according to the 247Sports Composite.
Brown barely registered a blip in recruiting circles. 247Sports’ lowest rated three-star recruit in the 2017 class was ranked 2,190th nationally. Brown was a two-star prospect slotted almost 500 spots below that.
“I can remember several different colleges talking about, ‘Well, we love Jason’s film,’ ” former Chancellor offensive line coach Pat Lilly said. “He’d go down and be the best quarterback at their camp and walk away with no answers.”
Haskins — who was committed to Maryland at the time — and Brown were part of a group of roughly eight quarterbacks who’d been invired to work out for the Terrapins staff. Standing on the far hash, each player threw five 30-yard out routes to the opposite sideline as part of an accuracy drill.
Haskins and Brown were the last recruits standing, as Gibbons recalled.
Brown went first on his final set, rocketing four balls to his target and sailing just a single pass high. Haskins followed by bouncing three balls into the ground and missing entirely on his other two throws.
Shocked by the result, staffers asked Brown to throw again to ensure the showing wasn’t a fluke. He drilled his receiver on five consecutive throws.
“Every throw (Jason) threw, people were on their feet cheering,” Gibbons said. “For lack of better words, it was like the Pied Piper had arrived.”
Brown starred for a Chancellor team that included future St. Francis and South Carolina teammate E.J. Jenkins and four-star Penn State signee and current Carolina Panther Yetur Gross-Matos.
Lilly estimates 13 or 14 players from that roster played collegiately at one level or another. Brown, though, was always overlooked.
“It was tough at times because obviously Yetur was at a different level at the time and immediately got (offers from) Clemson, Virginia Tech and UVA and the ball rolled with him,” Lilly explained. “We knew he was a can’t-miss guy, but we felt that way about Jason and E.J., too.”
A broken ankle during the tail end of his junior season didn’t help Brown’s cause, but Lilly and Gibbons were intent on getting him exposure. They traveled to camps at Clemson, Penn State, Duke, Virginia Tech, North Carolina and Maryland.
College coaches echoed similar sentiments: Tell Jason to expect a call with good news. Those calls never came.
Gibbons said Penn State had Brown as the No. 6 quarterback on their recruiting board that included current Nittany Lions starter Sean Clifford — who Brown beat out for offensive MVP honors at a seven-on-seven in State College.
Legendary Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster was enamored with both Jenkins and Brown, according to Gibbons and Lilly. Foster eventually extended Brown a preferred walk-on spot as either a linebacker or tight end.
Brown was prepared to accept the spot with the Hokies until a scholarship arose elsewhere.
Sitting in a hotel on a recruiting trip in Northern Virginia, Pecora, who’s now St. Francis’ offensive coordinator, was flipping through random high school film when he stumbled upon Jenkins’ and Brown’s clips.
Enamored with what he saw, he stopped off at Chancellor the next day. Brown and Jenkins visited St. Francis that weekend. Two weeks later, while eating dinner together, they committed to the Catholic school in rural Pennsylvania with an undergraduate population of less than 1,700 students.
“I haven’t had a happier day in recruiting than when (Jason) and E.J. committed on a Wednesday night,” Pecora told The State.
‘How does he do that?’
Bear Fenimore has been around plenty of talented quarterbacks. Growing up in the football hotbed that is Austin, Texas, has that effect.
Fenimore grew up a few blocks away from future No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick Baker Mayfield and played with him for a year at Lake Travis High School. He later overlapped with eventual pros Greg Ward Jr. and Kyle Allen, future Michigan starter John O’Korn and current Miami quarterback D’Eriq King during a three-year spell at Houston.
Fenimore was the most experienced of the Red Flash signal-callers when he transferred to St. Francis in search of playing time. The man he had to worry about, though, was an under-recruited freshman out of Virginia.
“The thing that I think sticks out most from the first time I even met (Brown) when he was just a freshman was that he was super confident,” Fenimore said. “One of the most confident people I’ve ever met in my life.”
Brown missed his first season at St. Francis after tearing his ACL during an all-star game before arriving on campus. He spent the following season behind Fenimore, completing 2-of-8 passes for 40 yards.
Gibbons and his 6-year-old son, Beau, traveled to Lehigh for Brown’s first start at St. Francis in 2019. Beau’s eyes moved from right to left, then back from left to right as Brown connected on his first college touchdown pass. He looked up at his father and muttered, “Dad, Jason just threw that ball 70 yards in the air.”
“Yeah son, he did,” Gibbons recalled, laughing.
“How does he do that?” Beau asked.
“I have no idea,” Gibbons said.
Brown finished the win over Lehigh with 293 yards and two touchdowns on 22-of-37 passing. He’d cap his lone season as the starter at St. Francis leading the Northeast Conference in passing yards (3,084) and passing touchdowns (28).
“I thought from the beginning that we had a special player,” Eric Long — Brown’s first offensive coordinator at St. Francis — told The State. “If he could just keep it together until he was ready to go, he was going to be all right.”
Brown prepared to guide St. Francis once more heading into 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered plans for a fall campaign.
After the NEC planned a spring season, St. Francis administrators decided not to allow fall sports to play their season’s in the spring.
Brown subsequently entered the transfer portal.
“My whole career I’ll wish I had a second season with Jason Brown,” Pecora said.
Leaving St. Francis and landing at South Carolina
Wise’s days in the South Carolina recruiting office usually entailed perusing the transfer portal for names.
Jenkins’ tape was the first he saw of the St. Francis duo. Digging into the 6-foot-7 tight end, Wise found an old article from Jenkins’ and Brown’s high school days documenting their relationship.
“You turn on (Brown’s) tape, you’ve got an instinctive player, big arm, got enough athleticism to get outside the pocket and a proven competitor at that level of production,” Wise, who now works in the Arizona Cardinals’ scouting department, told The State.
Just as it was coming out of high school, Jenkins had options, while Brown’s were limited.
Both received offers from South Carolina within a week of Wise flagging them. Jenkins had a handful of other schools after him. Baylor was interested. Auburn and former South Carolina offensive coordinator Mike Bobo also poked around.
USC was Brown’s only offer.
Again, they headed for the same stop.
“I think it was like a two-day turnaround between us between the whole staff watching (their film) and then making the call and offering them,” Wise said. “They got the ball rolling quick on that.”
Adding a chapter in Columbia, SC
Stepping to the podium tucked into the defensive meeting room in the Long Family Football Operations Center, Brown’s eyes were worn and sullied.
Twice he’d been beaten in quarterback competitions in Columbia. First it was Luke Doty in the spring. Zeb Noland followed suit after getting added to the roster in August.
“I kind of had a feeling how it was gonna go, and I prepared myself for it,” Brown said at the time. “But I’m not gonna lie, it hurt.”
Fast-forward two months and Brown is getting his chance. With Doty out for the season due to an aggravated foot injury and Noland returning from a bye week procedure on his right knee, Brown was elevated from third-string to starter ahead of the Florida game.
The 20 pounds Brown dropped over the offseason thanks to an acquired taste in salmon had him moving quicker. The late-night film sessions he, Doty, Noland and the rest of South Carolina’s quarterbacks hold weekly have resulted in quicker on-field processing.
“I think it’s a great lesson for all of us,” Beamer said Tuesday. “Just keep your head down and continue to work. That’s (Brown). He’s steady. He didn’t let the circumstances dictate how he was going to respond.”
Spinning off a Florida defender and ranging to his left, Brown fired a second-quarter pass to receiver Josh Vann deep down the left sideline. Leaping up and over a Gators defensive back, Vann secured the pass for a 50-yard gain.
Lilly recognized the shiftiness. As did Gibbons.
Brown had repped that move endlessly during his time as a high school quarterback.
The play amounted to one of South Carolina’s 12 chunk plays on the night and the eighth of Brown’s 14 completions. It also helped the Gamecocks notch their first marquee win of the Beamer era in a 40-17 rout of the Gators.
“When I went out and hit Josh on that deep ball going across the middle, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this thing,’ ” Brown said. “And we just never took our foot off the pedal.”
Brown has been swamped with attention since the Florida game. SEC Network interviewed him last week. National outlets delved into his story. Beamer said Brown has handled the increased interest with poise.
His encore performance against Missouri wasn’t perfect, but Brown’s second career start was another milestone in a topsy-turvy college career.
These days, everyone is looking at Jason Brown.
