From an escape room to broken silence, A.J. Brown tries to ease the Eagles’ mounting tension

When A.J. Brown speaks, the Eagles listen.

The deafening silence from the star receiver amid frustration the last few weeks made this reality all the more clear. With the pressure of late-season struggles persisting and the playoffs quickly approaching, Brown chose to stay quiet for nearly two weeks.

He broke that silence in the first team meeting of the week this past Wednesday, calling his shot with a social media post the night before.

I will speak tomorrow.

The Eagles listened. According to Jordan Mailata, they weren’t alone.

“He had the whole world watching him for about 20 minutes,” Mailata said Thursday. “It’s crazy.”

Whether he expected it or not, Brown’s words carried the type of weight and attention few players in the Eagles’ locker room can command. The first-year captain’s address started with an apology for putting his teammates in a position to speak for him and ended with him trying to galvanize the group dealing with mounting tension to right the ship with just one week until the postseason begins.

Brown’s actions can create tension. Perhaps his words can release it?

It doesn’t require a discerning eye to see the 26-year-old’s frustrations over the team’s last few performances. The Eagles’ rough stretch has coincided with a string of games in which Brown has fallen short of the historic pace he reached earlier this season and has featured several moments where Brown was visibly frustrated on the sideline during or after games.

“I think it does create waves,” slot receiver Britain Covey said. “And I think that he along with every other athlete that’s put in a leadership role of a multimillion-dollar organization is learning that some waves are better than others. Rather than saying that A.J.’s perfect, it’s a bigger compliment from me to say that he’s not, and he has the ability to recognize that. I think that, a lot of times, that’s what people miss out on.”

Brown added: “Especially during a tough time, if it was me by myself, you literally saw what I would do. I would stop talking and I would go to work, but you have to lead guys. Guys are watching.”

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Managing pressure has been a theme for the Eagles this season. Last season’s playoff run set up the inevitability of heightened urgency for another going into the season. Last season’s juggernaut has, in some ways, cast a shadow over this team, even with a tougher schedule, notable departures, and significant changes to the coaching staff.

Brown was a newcomer last year, but he carries significantly more responsibility in the locker room and outside it with his words and actions this season. The scrutiny he faces, and the waves he can create, are something he’s still adjusting to.

“I’m talking about on the city and everything,” Brown said. “I’m still learning, I’m not perfect.”

Losing four of their last five games with one week remaining in the regular season, the urgency has ratcheted up considerably for the Eagles in the last month. The regular-season finale against the New York Giants this Sunday will be the final chance for the Eagles to put together a convincing win before going into the postseason. Even with a win, they’ll most likely face an uphill battle as the No. 5 seed without home-field advantage in the wild-card round or thereafter.

Especially in a city where it’s harder to block things out, the difference in how players handle the building tension can go so far as changing locker-room dynamics.

“I think playing for this city, you have to really operate in a different way,” said safety Kevin Byard, who joined the team midseason. “For example, I come from Tennessee, which is obviously a smaller market, I feel like it was very easy to keep in-house things in-house. It’s very different over here. I feel like there’s leaks everywhere ... it can be very divisive in a way. It can kind of force players or whoever it may be to almost protect yourself.”

Whether the mental side of handling pressure has truly impacted the team during this 1-4 stretch is hard to quantify, but it’s something players have been trying to navigate. Brown organized a team trip to an escape room the Friday after the first Giants game because the team was “tense.”

He wanted players to spend time together in a more relaxed environment, although the one-hour experience itself may not have been the most Zen-like.

“After about 15 minutes, I got claustrophobic,” Brown said, laughing. “I was ready to go. It was cool, though. We all kind of worked together, we were really just tearing up the room.”

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About 30 players, including Jalen Hurts, Brandon Graham, Jason Kelce, Mailata, and Covey attended the night out after the team’s 33-25 win over the Giants.

On his weekly podcast with WIP-FM (94.1), Graham said a group primarily made up of defensive players also went to a local steakhouse for dinner after the escape room.

“The goal for us doing the escape room, and it stemmed from [Brown], was to stop being so tense,” Covey said. “Because everyone was feeling so tense.”

The win against the Giants pushed the Eagles to 11-4 on the season, but a late Giants comeback preserved the worry about this team not playing to the level of its talent. With New York quarterback Tyrod Taylor leading a drive deep into Eagles territory as time expired, the Fox broadcast also caught Eagles coach Nick Sirianni having animated discussions with several players, including edge rusher Haason Reddick and receiver DeVonta Smith.

After the game, Smith expressed his dissatisfaction with the level the team was at despite the win.

“We’re not playing good football right now,” Smith said. “As an offense, we’re not where we want to be. I’m not satisfied. Yeah, we got 11 wins. I’m not happy. It needs to be better for what I want to do, what everybody else in here wants to do, what we want to be.

“We’re nowhere near that, so, no, I’m not happy.”

Smith’s words foreshadowed last Sunday’s 35-31 home loss to the Arizona Cardinals, which led to Brown’s latest attempt to steady the ship earlier this week. Brown said there was “nothing to say” after the game, but came out Wednesday with plenty to address.

“I felt like I was doing the right thing as a captain by not compounding the negative with the negative,” Brown said. “We were going through tough times, and I didn’t want to continue to be negative. It took me a couple days to realize my teammates are answering questions on my behalf. I can speak for myself, I’m a man.”

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When asked about Brown’s address to the team on Wednesday, Julio Jones initially played coy.

“He did?” Jones asked, smirking. “That’s supposed to be a team thing. We’ve got to keep everything in-house now.”

Jokes aside, Jones said he wasn’t surprised by Brown’s actions. The 34-year-old who joined the Eagles midseason has been a mentor for Brown the last few years. They shared a locker room during Jones’ short stint with the Tennessee Titans and Brown was active in recruiting the future Hall of Fame wideout to the Eagles in October.

Jones has experience being the No. 1 receiver on successful and struggling teams. He’s been in the position Brown is trying to navigate and has given him advice on how to handle the balance of expressing frustration without alienating coaches or teammates.

“At the end of the day, you’re going to have stats, you’re going to have everything, it’s all about being a great teammate and putting the team first,” Jones said. “Just having the mentality. And he gets it. He’s a young player, he’s a phenomenal player, but he definitely gets it. And there are steps. It can take him a longer time to get there — I’ve played 13 years in the league. He has all the ability, the mindset, the mentality, and he’s a good person.

“You deal with a lot of adversity in this space. He understands what’s at stake, what’s in front of him. Just having those conversations, going back and forth, he’s like a little brother. We just talk about the realness in the game, controlling what you can control, and just being there for one another.”

Brown conceded that his mentality is that, regardless of how many targets he gets in a game, he’ll always want one more. It’s the type of mindset most elite receivers possess, but one Brown claims doesn’t result in him advocating for more targets in a game.

Still, in the last five, games Brown has had less production than he did during a torrid start to the season. Brown did not surpass 100 receiving yards in any of the last four games. He had double-digit targets in four of the last five games, but was targeted only five times against the Cardinals and was visibly frustrated in the final moments of the game.

Brown said his frustration after the Cardinals loss was about Smith suffering an ankle injury late in the game, but he still pushed back on the scrutiny he faces when things aren’t going well.

“That’s another reason why I wanted to apologize,” Brown said. “All you see is A.J. Brown is frustrated with the Eagles, A.J. this, A.J. that, but everybody in this locker room is frustrated. Why are you singling me out because I’m frustrated? Just because I’m shaking my head, showing emotion? You can look at everybody in the stadium has bad body language. They’re frustrated. I wanted to clear that up, because it’s not about me. We’re all frustrated.”

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Although players were reluctant to summarize Brown’s message after the fact, his general sentiment was to stay behind the coaching staff along with the apology for those who had to speak on his behalf.

The Eagles have a mix of young players in expanded roles to go along with a handful of key veteran leaders. They’ve drafted several players from big college programs like Alabama and Georgia in recent years, but even facing the pressure of sometimes needing a perfect record to reach expectations in college doesn’t compare to what they’ve dealt with as professionals.

“I would definitely say in the NFL,” cornerback Kelee Ringo said when asked if he felt more pressure at Georgia or with the Eagles. “It’s a business. You’re coming to work. Everybody is growing here, everyone has a certain expectation for themselves, a certain standard for themselves, and you have to uphold that every day. Every single day is an interview.”

Former Alabama and LSU cornerback Eli Ricks added: “I got the worst from the fans after I left LSU for Alabama, so I’m pretty used to it. But here? I ain’t going to lie, it’s a little different, because they even come for coaches, too.”

Particularly for younger players, Brown’s attempt to ease the tension this past week was important. Whether it leads to on-field results will be determined by the Eagles’ ability to turn things around in the coming weeks, but Brown’s silence and the words that followed, Mailata said, had a ripple effect.

“I think that helped a lot,” Mailata said. “Especially for the young guys we have on the team. Us old guys, we knew he was going to talk. We knew what kind of leader he was, we just had to give him space.”

“I think it loosened up everybody,” Mailata added. “Nobody’s walking on eggshells.”