FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — Jason Brownlee’s phone provides a constant reminder of how far he has come in his football journey.
And how much further he expects to go.
The New York Jets rookie wide receiver’s home screen is a photo of him being coached up by Aaron Rodgers on the field during offseason workouts. It’s a welcome to the NFL moment that will be forever cherished by Brownlee.
“I’m definitely going to get it framed,” a smiling Brownlee said after practice Sunday.
The undrafted free agent from Southern Miss has been among the early standouts in training camp, regularly making plays and impressing his new quarterback and coaches.
He might appear buried on the depth chart behind the likes of Garrett Wilson, Allen Lazard, Corey Davis, Mecole Hardman and Randall Cobb. But being an underdog doesn’t faze Brownlee. It never has.
“I’ve been through this type of situation before where I had to start all over and build from the ground up,” Brownlee said in an interview with The Associated Press. “So I know what it’s going to take — hard work and dedication — so I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing.
“And real soon, you’re going to see something real special.”
Brownlee is already showing signs of that.
With Wilson and Lazard dealing with recent injuries and Davis out with an illness, Brownlee saw increased snaps with the starting offense. Last Thursday, Rodgers threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to Brownlee in 11-on-11 team drills, a play during which the young receiver got past cornerback Sauce Gardner, last season’s Defensive Rookie of the Year.
Later, Brownlee had another TD catch, this time on a toss from Chris Streveler between two defenders.
“Really like where he’s going,” coach Robert Saleh said. “He still has a lot to prove, but he’s trending in that right direction.”
Not bad for a kid who didn’t play football until he was in middle school, when he started focusing on sports “because I used to get in trouble a lot growing up.”
The football field provided a safe haven for Brownlee, who played in junior high as a 5-foot-8 cornerback.
“I kept asking my mom, ‘When am I gonna get my growth spurt?’” Brownlee said with a laugh. “It didn’t happen until like 10th or 11th grade.”
That’s when Brownlee grew to almost his current 6-3 height at West Point High School in West Point, Mississippi.
“I shot up and got real tall, but I was skinny, though,” said Brownlee, who’s now listed at 198 pounds. “So I started playing receiver and told my coach, ‘Put me at receiver,’ because I liked scoring touchdowns.
“Ain’t nothing like scoring a touchdown. I love it.”
He was good at it, too. Brownlee scored 11 as a senior while helping lead West Point to back-to-back state titles.
But even with that success, he drew little interest from big-time Division I football programs. So he went to East Mississippi Community College, where he led junior college players with 75 catches for 1,055 yards and 12 TDs in his second season.
Southern Miss came calling and Brownlee quickly made his mark there, too. He led the Golden Eagles in catches, yards and TD receptions in his first two seasons, and then schools such as Ole Miss and Mississippi State asked him to transfer.
But Brownlee declined.
“I was like, no, I’m sticking with the school that stood beside me,” Brownlee said. “So I just kept putting on for my school and showed them loyalty. And everything wasn’t easy there, either, because I played with like 20 different quarterbacks over my college career so I had to make the most of every opportunity.”
Despite a big final season at Southern Miss during which he had 55 catches for 891 yards and eight TDs, Brownlee went undrafted in April.
“I told my mom, ‘Don’t hold your head down, I got it,’” Brownlee recalled. “I told her, ‘I’m going to go prove everybody wrong.’”
Then he got a call from the Jets, who had recently traded for Rodgers. Saleh said Brownlee was in the Jets’ discussions throughout the final day of the draft.
“Knowing that Aaron Rodgers was going to be my quarterback? I was like, ‘There ain’t no way I’m not going to the Jets to play with a Hall of Fame quarterback,” Brownlee said.
Then came that moment during practice in June, when Rodgers sidled over to Brownlee and broke down the route he had just run — a curl during which he turned back a little too quick.
“Just be under control, really, that’s what he was telling me and don’t come in there real fast,” Brownlee said. “If I’m coming in fast and he’s throwing it fast and I’m running fast, it isn’t going to be good. It might go straight through my hands.”
That hasn’t happened much during his first NFL training camp.
Brownlee is soaking up everything Rodgers — who singled him out in June for having an impressive spring — and his coaches tell him. And he’s determined to make his mark in what he calls “the perfect offense” for him.
“It’s just a great opportunity, man,” Brownlee said. “I’m still trying to get my head around everything and soak it all in. But I’ve been having the best time of my life since I’ve been here.”
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