Jerome Brown has been gone for 32 years. The Eagles still make his family and hometown feel close to him.

Calvin Brown was sitting on his brother’s couch in Brooksville, Fla., watching the Super Bowl last month, when he saw someone familiar. It was an Eagles defensive tackle. He was big, aggressive, and getting double-teamed for most of the game.

This wasn’t a successful strategy for the Chiefs. While Jalen Carter soaked up most of their attention, the rest of the Eagles’ defensive line was freed to rush the quarterback.

Brown turned to his brothers.

“That reminds me of Jerome,” he said.

About 60 miles away, in Orlando, Dee Brown thought the same thing.

“Jalen is aggressive, playful, talking trash the entire game,” he said. “That definitely reminds me of the old man.”

The old man — Dee’s father — is the late Jerome Brown, the legendary Eagles defensive tackle, whose size paled only to his personality. Like Carter, he played with an edge. Brown would fling ballcarriers to the ground with disgust. He’d lunge his 292-pound body at scrambling quarterbacks, and was not above throwing a punch in training camp.

There are other similarities. Carter wears No. 98; Brown wore No. 99 (and No. 98 in college). Both players are from Florida: Carter grew up in Apopka, an hour-and-a-half east from Brown’s Brooksville hometown.

Both Carter and Brown were picked ninth overall by the Eagles in the NFL draft, 36 years apart, for their rare combination of speed and mobility.

The comparisons make Brown’s brother smile.

“[Carter] was a stud,” Calvin said. “Just like Jerome was a big stud, right in the middle.”

It’s been 32 years since Brown died in a car crash at age 27. His death was tragic and a blow to Buddy Ryan’s defense, one that once seemed destined to end the Eagles’ Super Bowl drought.

In the decades since, Brown’s family and close friends have remained devoted to keeping his memory alive. Cynthia, Brown’s sister, likes to collect photos of her brother when he wasn’t donning a jersey.

Calvin carries Jerome’s worn-out wallet with him wherever he goes.

“It reminds me of the times he’d open it up and help people,” he said.

Brown’s friends and family have also remained devoted to the Eagles. In 2018, when they played the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII, Cynthia turned the game into an event. A friend designed matching T-shirts with Jerome’s face on them, and then made new shirts in 2023, when the Eagles faced the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII.

The tradition continued in 2025. Relatives from Alabama to Indiana to Georgia to New Jersey wore a fresh batch of shirts, emblazoned with Brown’s face, as they watched the Eagles win their second Super Bowl title on Feb. 9.

“I was elated,” Cynthia said. “I was just in awe. I thought it was going to be a close game, but they dominated, and I remember hearing, ‘Oh, the defense is playing with the spirit of Jerome and Reggie [White].’ That’s what I kept hearing. Oh, they were there. Oh, they were there.”

Brown’s presence still looms large in Brooksville, where No. 99 jerseys are as easily found as stories about the boisterous defensive lineman. There is a Jerome Brown mural at City Hall, and a Jerome Brown Community Center (located at 99 Jerome Brown Place). A few bars and churches in town held Eagles-themed Super Bowl parties last month.

Tim Jinkens, Brown’s high school football coach, watched the game from home. Like many of the late defensive tackle’s loved ones, his relationship with the Eagles is bittersweet.

For years, Jinkens and Brown had a routine. After Brown was done with his pregame meal in Philadelphia, he’d call the Red Mule Pub, where Jinkens worked.

“He’d say, ‘Tim, you gotta watch tonight,’” Jinkens recalled. ‘”I’m going to get in a fight.’”

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His phone isn’t ringing anymore. The former bar owner wishes he could see his friend on the sideline or in a suite during these big events, and has had a hard time watching games for that reason. But the Super Bowl was different.

“Win it for Jerome,” Jinkens said. “That’s what I was thinking. I know they’ve got other reasons why they want to win. But in my mind, in Brooksville’s mind …”

Brown was beloved in his small community. Even after the Eagles drafted him, he lived there in the offseason, often bringing his teammates along to visit.

White — the Hall of Fame defensive end who played five seasons with Brown — was an ordained minister, just like Brown’s grandfather and uncle. He delivered a sermon at Josephine Street Church of the Living God, in Brooksville, in May 1992. Tight end Keith Jackson attended a few services, as well.

Linebacker Seth Joyner and defensive end Clyde Simmons would travel to Brooksville during the spring. In 1992, Brown held a football camp for local kids at his alma mater, Hernando High School. Fifteen NFL players showed up, most of them his teammates, including Cortez Kennedy, Randall Cunningham, Mike Golic, Wes Hopkins, and Byron Evans.

Brooksville has produced other professional football players. Curtis Bunche, a defensive end who was drafted by the Eagles in 1979 and went on to play in the USFL, attended the same high school as Brown, as did Ricky Feacher, a wide receiver drafted by the Patriots in 1976.

But few have given back to the area as much as Brown, and as a result, a city with a population of 9,789, about 45 miles north of Tampa, has developed a kinship with the Birds.

“They don’t see NFL players here,” Jinkens said. “I remember one event, Reggie White signed 500 autographs. Now, who would do something like that? It was a special time. And I was blessed to play a small part in it.”

It wasn’t just about football. Brown gave back in other ways. On Sunday nights, Jinkens and Brown would drive through the south side of Brooksville, keeping a lookout for kids who seemed like they needed help.

He’d pick them up off the street, and bring them to the movies. Brown would also give money to underprivileged families, and anyone who needed medical attention.

His son, Dee, remembers Brown changing tires for people on the side of the road, and picking up the occasional hitchhiker.

“One time, he was like, ‘I’m gonna pick you up, bud, but if you do anything, it won’t end well for you,’” Dee said with a laugh. “This dude — and we can’t do that stuff now — but he was literally picking up random people, and saying, ‘I’m going to take you to get some help.’”

In June 1988, after his rookie NFL season, Jerome was contacted by Brooksville’s police chief, Ed Tincher. Tincher had heard of an upcoming Ku Klux Klan rally at the Hernando County Courthouse, and was worried about violence breaking out.

“He asked, ‘What can you do?’” Cynthia said. “‘We don’t want this here.’”

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Brown drove to the courthouse in his Ford Bronco, with his windows rolled down and his speakers turned all the way up. He shut the door and walked straight into the middle of the rally, carrying a sign above his head: “Go Away, KKK.”

It worked. The rally fizzled. Brown later told a reporter that he wasn’t a hero; just a big kid with a big stereo.

Tincher wasn’t so sure.

“You could see how the youth respected Jerome,” he told the Tampa Bay Times in 1992. “They really listened to him. And it’s not just the youth. There were people there who we knew were drug dealers — even they responded.

“He was able to keep people from stepping over that line involving physical violence. That in itself is a heck of a statement for the young man.”

On June 25, 1992, Brown was driving his black Chevrolet Corvette with his 12-year-old nephew, Gus, on a narrow back road in Brooksville. It was poorly maintained and full of potholes. Brown was driving more than 50 mph in a 30 mph zone, and lost control of his car, according to police reports at the time.

He hit a dirt mound, slammed into a utility pole, and flipped upside down.

Neither Brown nor Gus was wearing a seat belt. Both were killed.

Jinkens thought the news of Brown’s passing was a sick joke. Brown epitomized living life to the fullest. How could he be gone so soon?

A week after the car crash, Brown’s family held his funeral at the First Baptist Church of Brooksville. At least 2,000 people showed up, including 21 Eagles, 10 retired players, and two draft picks. The funeral program had an image of an Eagle flying past a cross.

Many of Brown’s teammates regularly returned to Brooksville for charity events in his honor. Jackson and Simmons went to his honorary golf tournament every year. When the town announced that it intended to build a Jerome Brown Community Center, White and Jackson said they’d match whatever money was raised.

Dee was 9 at the time. He already loved the Eagles, but dove even further into his fandom after his father died. It made him feel closer to Jerome, and it still does.

At least once a year, Dee flies from Orlando to Philadelphia. He goes to a game at Lincoln Financial Field, sometimes by himself, sometimes with his two sons. He looks around, at the sea of green, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of No. 99.

And he always returns to Florida fulfilled.

“Good [play], bad [play], whatever it is,” he said. “You’re gonna see 99 all over the place.”