State Your Case: Separating Fact from Fiction with HOF Worthy Lomas Brown

By John Turney 

It didn't happen. I'm telling you, it just didn't. 

I'm talking about an unprofessional act that a player confessed happened, but that the film ... OK, the video ... demonstrates did not. Nevertheless, it's cited as evidence when the player's career is evaluated by Hall-of-Fame selectors and was mentioned as recently as last week by a national football writer.

So let's just make this clear: It ... did ... not ... happen.

The player is former Detroit Lions' tackle Lomas Brown (who also played for the Cardinals, Browns, Giants and Buccaneers in his 18-year NFL career), and the play is one where he contends he once intentionally whiffed on a block so that his quarterback -- Scott Mitchell -- would get hurt.

Which, indeed, he was.

"We were playing Green Bay in Milwaukee," Brown told ESPN radio over a decade ago. "We were getting beat, 24-3, at that time, and [Mitchell] just stunk up the place. He's throwing interceptions, just everything. 

"So I looked at Kevin Glover, our All-Pro center, and I said, 'Glove, that is it.' I said, 'I'm getting him out the game.' So I got the 'gator arms' on the guy (my opponent) at the last minute, he got around me, he hit Scott Mitchell, he did something to his finger and he came out the game. Dave Krieg came in the game."

The interview became a big deal in the Detroit media, though the Detroit Free Press only disputed the score of the game when Mitchell exited. It didn't dispute the story but followed by getting the thoughts of Mitchell and former Lions' coaches. OK, fine. Except it did not happen.

Not on that play. Not in that game. Not in that year.

How do I know? The game is available online where you can watch it. In fact, there's a clip on X, which is from the right game, the right year, the right opponent and the right city. There is zero question on what play Mitchell was hurt -- a blitz, with the Packers rushing seven and the Lions in a six-man protection. So someone had to go free.

General pass-protection rules are to protect from the inside out, and that's what the Lions did. Brown took the blitzing inside linebacker, and he did the right thing. The hit on Mitchell cannot be pinned on him. It might be something else, like Mitchell not throwing to the hot receiver or the running back failing to recognize an exception to the inside-out rule on his dual read. But that's unknowable.

What is knowable is that Brown did not get "gator arms," and his opponent did not blast Mitchell with the hit that forced him from the game ... which is what he told ESPN radio.

Brown takes the inside linebacker reading "heels" -- the ILBers' feet were past the DE's heels, telling Brown 

to take him. If anyone might be at fault, likely Barry Sanders who probably had a dual read and could have 

decided that the DE was the bigger threat than the inside guy, but we'll never know that. It would be an exception 

to the 'inside-out' protection rule. In no case, though, would Lomas Brown be at fault on this play.

So why did he say it? Good question. Maybe he imagined it. Maybe there was another play where he didn't give a full effort, and Mitchell wasn't hurt. As I said, all speculation is unknowable.

All we do know is that the story he told isn't accurate.

I wanted to straighten that out because Lomas Brown had a career worth considering for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was the top blocker for one of the best-ever running backs -- Barry Sanders -- who, as great as he was, needed exceptional blockers, just as Jim Brown and Emmitt Smith did. Seven of Sanders' 10 years and over 10,000 of his 15,000 rushing yards were when he and Brown were teammates. 

No, the Lions were not a great team, but they were among the NFL's better clubs. In those seven years, they had four winning seasons, including three with double-digit wins -- producing a 12-4 record in 1991 when they won the NFC Central division. Four times they made the playoffs, but three times they were one-and-done after beating the up-and-coming Dallas Cowboys in 1991.

Maybe the Lions' failure to do more in the playoffs has something to do with Hall voters not giving him more attention. I know that Brown believes it does.

"If I'm brutally honest," he told the Free Press, "I just think it’s the Lions. I just think (voters) didn’t put the respect on our team like the Dallas Cowboys.

"I look at myself, my records or my accomplishments ... and I look at some of the guys that are in there ... and I think mine is comparable to some of the guys that had gotten in. But a lot of it's off the team that you played off of. I know a tremendous amount is off playoff success."

BROWN VS. HALL OF FAMERS

Maybe. But that's not as absolute as he might think. Some of the linemen enshrined recently in Canton did not have much postseason success -- with Kevin Mawae, Joe Thomas, Tony Boselli, Steve Hutchinson and Will Shields among them. Voters today are more objective than those in the past when playing for the Packers or Steelers was a boost to a Gold Jacket. 

But Brown is right on one thing: His career is on par with other Hall-of-Fame tackles. He compares well with his peers. For openers, only one offensive lineman in the history of the game played and started more games, and that's Hall-of-Famer Bruce Matthews. That means something. It means Brown had durability and availability. 

As far as comparisons, check this out:  Brown's career is eerily similar to Jackie Slater, the longtime Los Angeles Rams' tackle. Slater played 20 seasons; Brown 18. Brown played 263 games, with 251 starts, while Slater played 259 and started 211. Both were three-time All-Pros, but Brown was a consensus All-Pro (making the majority of the major organizations' teams) once. Slater never was one. If you extend personal honors to years they made first-or second-team All-Pro, the tally is six for Brown and five for Slater.

Both went to seven Pro Bowls.

There's more, and the envelope, please.

-- Neither were all-decade.

-- Slater was a starter for seven playoff teams and a backup for three. Brown was a starter for six playoff teams -- the Lions, Cardinals and Giants -- and a backup for one, the 2002 Buccaneers.

-- Both started in a Super Bowl, and both of their teams fell short. But Brown returned to the Super Bowl as a backup for the 2002 Bucs, where he won a ring. 

-- Both blocked for record-setting runners: Slater for Eric Dickerson and Brown for Barry Sanders.

But when it comes to Hall of Fame consideration, the similarities end. Slater was a first-ballot selection, voted into the Class of 2001, while Brown has never been a finalist or semifinalist. Heck, he was so far off the radar that there were a couple of years he wasn't even on the preliminary list!

It seems unfair for two players with nearly identical resumes to have two vastly different outcomes ... and it is. Lomas Brown deserves better.

His seven Pro Bowls compare favorably to other Hall-of-Fame tackles. It's the same number that Ron Yary, Gary Zimmerman, Orlando Pace and, yes, Slater, were selected. And it's more than Bob Brown, Dan Dierdorf, Rayfield Wright, Mike McCormack, Tony Boselli, Bob St. Clair and Jimbo Covert.

In terms of first-team All-Pro selections, the 6-4, 282-pounder (at the beginning of his career, anyway) also has similar credentials: His three All-Pro seasons not only match Slater; they're the same number as Boselli and St. Clair and more than McCormack, Covert and Winston Hill.

Other Halls of Fame get it. The Detroit Lions' Hall of Fame (2023) picked him as a member. So did the College Hall of Fame (2020). His alma mater did, too. He was named to the University of Florida Athletics Hall of Fame in 1995. Even the state of Michigan inducted him to its Hall of Fame in 2013.

Along the way, Brown was decorated at every level. He was on the Florida High School All-Century Team and the Detroit Lions' 75th and 100th anniversary teams, as well as the University of Florida's All-Century team.

Yet Canton hasn't called.

An All-American at Florida in 1984, Brown was the first pick of the Lions -- and the sixth overall -- in the 1985 NFL draft, and he became a starter immediately. You already know what he did for Barry Sanders and the Lions' running game, but he was even better pass blocker. 

Quick and athletic for a man his size, he excelled while spending a significant part of his Lions' career in a run-and-shoot offense that often included  '10' personnel, with four wide receivers and a running back. The scheme could send all five eligible receivers into pass routes,  leaving just five offensive linemen to block without help from a tight end of fullback.

That meant Brown was on his own vs. the top pass rushers in the NFL, and he rose to the challenge.

He left the Lions for Arizona in 1996 as an unrestricted free agent and was named to  his seventh Pro Bowl. A couple of years later, he was the starting left tackle on a 9-7 Cardinals' playoff team that beat Dallas, 20-7, in an NFC wildcard game. From there, it was on to the expansion Cleveland Browns for a year, then the New York Giants for two seasons before winding up his career in Tampa.

Perhaps playing for four teams the last seven years of his career may cause Hall-of-Fame voters to overlook Brown when submitting their ballots. I don't know. What I do know is that his time is running out on his Hall-of-Fame candidacy. He has three more years of modern-era eligibility before moving into the seniors' category, sometimes call "the abyss" for the overwhelming number of Hall-worthy candidates who can get lost there.

It's time for Lomas Brown to have his case heard because his body of work demands it. No, he didn't intentionally get his quarterback hurt, but he did play for nearly two decades at an elite level ... for teams that usually were winners ... and with enough success that he was decorated as much ... or more ... accolades as other Hall-of-Fame linemen.