Bomber Brown skips no down

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/07/2011 (5437 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The  thing is, it would have been easy to mail this one in. No one would have complained — no one would have dared.

If anyone is entitled to go through the motions for one final football season, it is surely Doug Brown. The 36-year-old defensive tackle has been the best part of some truly awful Winnipeg Blue Bombers football teams the past 11 seasons. When all about him were losing their heads, Brown always kept his. On some teams with questionable heart, his always beat loud and proud. When everyone else had quit, Brown still showed up every down — and generally took on two men at once.

So if he decided that in this season, his self-proclaimed final campaign, he would maybe cash a few markers and enjoy a leisurely final stroll through the league, he would have been well within his rights. Fact is, even at half speed, he would still be one of the better interior linemen in the CFL.

But instead of taking the easy way out, Brown has done just the opposite in this young 2011 season. He is playing not at half-speed, but at a whole other speed entirely as he continues to defy his age, conventional wisdom and basic common sense to lead the CFL in categories normally reserved for men at least 10 years his junior.

Consider: Heading into the Bombers’ game against the Calgary Stampeders Thursday night at Canad Inns Stadium, Brown is tied for the league lead in sacks and leads the loop in tackles by an interior lineman.

Some swan song.

“I’m actually contemplating just retiring right now,” Brown laughed Tuesday, “so I can tell people, ‘My last year, I was leading the league in sacks and I just bowed out gracefully.’ That’s my thought process right now. Might as well go out on top, right?”

The Bombers’ defence has been, by far, the most dominating in the CFL through two games this season, and there are all kinds of credit to go around.

New co-ordinator Tim Burke has earned plaudits for an aggressive new style of defence that has been executing almost flawlessly and has replaced last year’s CFL sack leader, Phillip Hunt, with this season’s co-leaders — Brown and defensive end Odell Willis.

Second-year players like defensive back Alex Suber, who scored the game-winning touchdown against Hamilton on an interception return, have been singled out for their quick evolution from green rookies in 2010 to seasoned veterans this year.

Veterans like middle linebacker Joe Lobendahn, named CFL defensive player of the week Tuesday, have been getting praise for resurrecting their game this year after stumbling right along with their team to a 4-14 record last season.

But lost in the middle of it all — literally — has been Brown, whose best handiwork usually gets missed amid the tangle of giants along the line of scrimmage.

“He gets double-teamed virtually every play,” Lobendahn said, “and all that does is to take the pressure off me and free me up. It helps a lot having him in there.”

Although his three sacks already this season have quite rightly shone a spotlight on his work, Brown says he’s prouder of his other league-leading statistic: those eight tackles that put him tops in tackles among interior defensive linemen.

“The sacks are neither here nor there. I don’t usually get too many freebies, but I’ve got some this year to put me there.

“But what I really pride myself on is being active along the interior of the defensive line. I like to average in the 40s and low 50s in terms of production of tackles every year.”

At his current absurd pace, Brown would finish the 2011 season with 72 tackles and 27 sacks. That’s an impossible pace to sustain, of course, but it would not seem outlandish, given his torrid start, to suggest he could achieve something even greater this season — have his most productive campaign as a pro football player in his final year.

Consider: After just two games, he’s already almost halfway to his career-best mark for sacks in a season — seven, in 2001 and 2007. And he’s light years ahead of the pace he set in 2006 when he recorded his career-best number of tackles, 52.

Put it all together and that song this overgrown swan is singing this season might yet turn out to be an opera.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Doug Brown

Born: Sept. 29, 1974,

New Westminster, B.C.

Ht: 6-8 Wt: 290

Acquired: In a trade with

Calgary in 2001

2011 statistics

Sacks: 3 (tied for CFL lead)

Tackles: 8 (1st among interior linemen)

Quote

“I’m actually contemplating just retiring right now so I can tell people, ‘My last year, I was leading the league in sacks and I just bowed out gracefully.'”