Remembering Eagles DT Jerome Brown, 20 Years After His Fatal Accident

Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Jerome Brown died at age 27 in an automobile accident in Florida 20 years ago today. The Eagles star was selected to two Pro Bowls in 1990 and 1991, during his last year with the Eagles, their defense was ranked number one in the NFL under head coach Buddy Ryan. To this day many of Brown's former teammates remember him and the Philadelphia Daily News today remembers Brown on the day of his tragic accident with some thoughts from former teammates. Here are a few:Seth Joyner: "Once Jerome died, that was the signal of the end. Because without him in the middle, it made life more difficult for Clyde and Reggie, because now you don't have a guy pushing in the middle who you have to double." Britt Hager: "Jerome's persona was bigger than life, but he was bigger than life. When that guy got into the room, the atmosphere changed." Eric Allen: "When Jerome passed away, you just felt like, ‘Wow, we're not invincible! You really can't predict what our futures are going to be. It's life and death.' It took us a long time to understand how to come back and try to fill that friendship void. That was like a brother, not a teammate. It was very difficult for us. Because we were so tight, we tried to keep his great sense of humor alive. Whenever we traveled, we took his locker, his jersey with us. We tried everything we could do to get to the big game for him. But it came down to, we needed him. He was a huge piece of our success." Clyde Simmons: "It made me change my approach to how I thought about football because it was a great loss to me. A dear friend and someone I was as close to as my own brother. When he died, it changed the way I approached the game. It became more businesslike than having fun."

Source: The Redzone
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