FORMER OHIO STATE SAFETY COREY BROWN BUILDING CAREER AS A COACH AT SLIPPERY ROCK UNIVERSITY
Corey Brown wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next when he went unselected in the 2014 NFL draft and his career playing football came to an end.
Four years later, however, Brown’s passion for the sport has brought him back to the football field, and that’s where he expects to be for many years to come.
A safety for Ohio State from 2009-13, Brown had a tryout with his hometown Pittsburgh Steelers in 2014 but never played in an NFL regular-season game, thrusting him into the real world without a clear career path. Brown spent time working in management for the supermarket chain Giant Eagle, while also exploring jobs in real estate and sales. Eventually, though, Brown decided he wanted to be a football coach.
"After my playing career, I just had to step away from the game for a second, just to see exactly what I wanted to do in life and what I wanted to be my career," Brown said. "And I finally figured out that I wanted to get back to coaching and be around football, and once I got back around it, I fell in love with it again."
Upon that realization, Brown called Terry Smith – his former coach at Gateway High School, and now the assistant head coach and cornerbacks coach at Penn State – who recommended that Brown visit the website Football Scoop to search for openings. As it turned out, Slippery Rock University – a Division II school in western Pennsylvania, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh – was looking for a graduate assistant to coach defensive backs, and Smith recommended Brown to Slippery Rock head coach Shawn Lutz.
Brown got the job, and after a year as a graduate assistant, he now has a master’s degree and is The Rock’s full-time defensive backs coach.
"I would have gone anywhere, but it just happened to favor me in my situation, because Slippery Rock’s an hour from my house," Brown told
Eleven Warriors. "So it was a perfect distance for me to get going and get my feet wet."
In his first year as a coach, Brown says the biggest things he learned were how to connect with his players, getting them to buy in and get the most out of them. After playing for one of the most prominent and profitable college football programs in the country, Brown also had to learn how to work and recruit with fewer resources at the Division II level.
Brown felt prepared to be a coach, though, because of the coaches he learned from as a player, including Smith but also including Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel, Everett Withers, Kerry Coombs and Taver Johnson at Ohio State. Brown also said that Lutz, as well as the rest of Slippery Rock’s coaching staff, have done a great job showing him the ropes.
Having played at Ohio State has helped Brown as a coach, he said, not only because of what he learned being a Buckeye but also because it helps him command immediate respect from his players.
"They really look up to the fact that I played at Ohio State," Brown said. "(They think), 'He knows what it takes to be there,' so they really buy into what I’m saying and really buy into everything I’m coaching and trying to teach and help them out with, so it’s definitely helped me out along the way."
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