How we covered Jerome Brown’s tragic death, 30 years ago this weekend

"When he died, it changed the way I approached the game," recalls former Eagles teammate Clyde Simmons.

During the 1988 season, Reggie White and teammates Jerome Brown (99) and Todd Bell (52) shared a laugh at practice with head coach Buddy Ryan.Read moreFile Photo

Updated June 25, 2022, 12:59 p.m. ET

Published June 25, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Thirty years ago this Saturday, the Philadelphia sports world tragically lost a larger than life figure when Eagles defensive tackle Jerome Brown died in a single-car crash in Florida.

Just 27 years old at the time, the former University of Miami star and ninth overall pick for the Eagles in 1987 was preparing for his sixth NFL season with the Birds when he lost control of his Chevrolet Corvette and crashed into a palm tree, killing him and his 12-year-old nephew.

A two-time All-Pro player in Philly, Brown’s legacy is immense considering he spent just five years with the Eagles.

“When Jerome passed away, you just felt like, ‘Wow, we’re not invincible! You really can’t predict what our futures are going to be. It’s life and death,’” former teammate Eric Allen told The Daily News just over a decade ago. “It took us a long time to understand how to come back and try to fill that friendship void. That was like a brother, not a teammate.

“It was very difficult for us. Because we were so tight, we tried to keep his great sense of humor alive. Whenever we traveled, we took his locker, his jersey with us. We tried everything we could do to get to the big game for him. But it came down to, we needed him. He was a huge piece of our success.”

Fellow teammate Seth Joyner, who more recently has become known for his Eagles analysis as a member of NBC Sports Philadelphia’s pre- and postgame shows, also reflected on Brown impact on the team.

“Once Jerome died, that was the signal of the end,” Joyner said. “Because without him in the middle, it made life more difficult for Clyde [Simmons] and Reggie [White], because now you don’t have a guy pushing in the middle who you have to double.”

White, who considered Brown his best friend, passed away in 2004, but Simmons recalled for that Daily News story just how much his outlook on life and his career was altered by Brown’s sudden passing.

“It made me change my approach to how I thought about football because it was a great loss to me,” Simmons said. “A dear friend and someone I was as close to as my own brother. When he died, it changed the way I approached the game. It became more businesslike than having fun.”

Here’s a look back at how The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily News covered Brown’s death in 1992:

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Click each story to read more and see the other stories that appeared in print that day.

The Philadelphia Daily News

While looking back at the coverage from the time can put you back in that moment — if you were around to experience it — there’s something more visceral about the first couple paragraphs of longtime Daily News columnist Rich Hofmann’s first-hand account of the night Brown passed away, which he wrote 10 years ago on the 20th anniversary of his untimely death:

BEFORE cellphones, before the Internet, it was on a Thursday evening exactly 20 years ago when the phone hanging on the kitchen wall began to ring. It was the office. Jerome Brown was dead.

You do this job long enough and you become numb to stuff. The news is bad, yes, but an impending deadline becomes the most powerful anesthetic. You gather your thoughts for a few minutes, if you have a few minutes, and then you start typing. There isn't any other way.

That night was one of the hardest, though. It is easy to remember the feeling, even after all this time. No one is ever ready for that kind of news, especially about someone you have covered pretty closely for 5 years: the Eagles' 27-year-old defensive tackle and a nephew, dead in a Corvette, dead in a one-car accident at high speed, wrapped around a utility pole.

There was all of the shock because this huge man with a matching, playful personality was gone. The guy was just so much fun. It was impossible to forget the day this big kid of a man brought a new leather briefcase into the locker room and, when asked about it, half-proudly and half-conspiratorially unlatched it to reveal the full setup for a portable bar. There were dozens of moments like that, at least a couple of which are printable.

But it was more than just the personal shock. This might be the subsequent years talking, more than the memory of that horrible night, but everyone sensed the loss of not just a man, but of a rollicking era and all of its attendant possibilities.

Rich Hofmann, The Philadelphia Daily News

Here’s a look back at the story Hofmann turned in that day back in 1987, the one he recalls having to write in the above piece:

Thirty years later, Brown is still remembered for being one of a kind.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed Brown as a defensive end instead of a defensive tackle.