Ex-Lion Ray Brown gets 2nd shot at Super Bowl as coach
San Jose, Calif. — Former NFL offensive lineman Ray Brown won a Super Bowl with Washington in the 1991 season.
It was already his sixth year in the league, but he spent 14 years trying to get back to the title game, including two with the Lions. But, as is the case with many players, that Super Bowl run was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Brown, though, has since moved onto coaching, and now he’ll have a chance to win another Super Bowl on Sunday as the offensive line coach for the Carolina Panthers.
“I was just always trying to get back,” Brown said at Super Bowl Opening Night on Monday. “I just really thought I might be coming back the next year or the year after that, and it finally happened for us this year. So, it’s good.”
Brown, 53, never planned to be a coach. He spent his first three years with the Cardinals before joining Washington in 1989. After seven seasons, he went to San Francisco from 1996-2001 where legendary coach Bill Walsh was the general manager for Brown’s final three years with the 49ers.
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Then, Brown went to Detroit from 2002-03, and the possibility of returning to the Super Bowl was slim as the Lions went 3-13 and 5-11. Despite the lack of success, Brown enjoyed his time with the Lions because people who knew his father growing up in Arkansas had moved to Michigan and shared stories with Brown.
Plus, being the veteran in the locker room gave Brown his first real taste of coaching, even if that wasn’t his job.
“At that part of my career, I think I was enjoying, one, teaching and sharing with the young guys, which eventually led me to getting into coaching,” Brown said of his time in Detroit.
Brown went back to Washington from 2004-05 to end his playing career, but after he was cut, Walsh called him to have a meeting.
“I have this meeting with Bill and he goes, ‘Hey, you’re one of us, you need to be in this coaching thing. I’ll help you any way I can,’” Brown said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ It was a real intense meeting.”
Between the suggestion from Walsh and previous ones from Bobb McKittrick, the longtime 49ers offensive line coach who died in 2000, Brown started coaching a few years after his career ended, starting with Washington in 2006. He then went to Buffalo from 2008-09, San Francisco in 2010 and has been with the Panthers since 2011.
And on Sunday, Brown’s offensive line will try to stop a potent Broncos pass rush as the Panthers try to win the first Super Bowl in franchise history and give Brown the second title he’s been chasing for more than two decades.
“Nothing beats playing, but coaching is a close second to being in the game,” he said.
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