Vista Murrieta QB Derrick Brown is quite a handful for opponents
A DUAL-THREAT, BROWN HAS LED THE BRONCOS TO THEIR SECOND STRAIGHT TITLE GAME APPEARANCE
MURRIETA ---- Penny Brown can take a hit. The challenge most Friday nights is withstandingapostgame embrace with a 6-foot-3, 240-pound frame that carves opposing defenses.
Indeed, getting your arms around Vista Murrieta quarterback Derrick Brown is not an easy task.
"He's like a Rottweiler that thinks he's a Chihuahua," Penny, Derrick Brown's mother, said. " … He comes over to hug you and he almost rolls into you. You're overwhelmed by his size and his weight. He just smothers you.
"Of course, I can't breathe, but I love it."
Brown's play this year, of course, has given mother and son plenty of reasons to embrace in joy.
A three-year starter, Brown has accounted for 38 touchdowns in leading Vista Murrieta to its second consecutive CIF Southern Section Inland Division title game. Two scores came on a pair of overtime runs last week to punch the Broncos' ticket to Friday's showdown with Corona Centennial (13-0), the No. 2 team in the state.
Calm, cool and collected, Brown needed just two touches ---- a 25-yard run and a 12-yard dash ---- to lift Vista Murrieta (12-1) past Rancho Cucamonga in double-overtime after shaking off a sluggish start in Saturday's semifinal.
Brown, in fact, missed on his first five passes and the Broncos had yet to collect a first down when he set up to punt, fielded a high snap and noticed the Rancho Cucamonga defense had already retreated into coverage mode.
Alertly watching the play unfold in front of him, Brown tucked the ball and darted up the middle for a 21-yard scamper that set up the Broncos' first score of the game.
Brown's only concern? That he'd risked too much with his improv.
Coach Coley Candaele, of course, has trusted Brown's decisions since handing him the keys to the offense three years ago.
"Shoot, the ball's in your hands every play," said Candaele, an option quarterback himself in his high school days. "You've got to make a decision and be prepared. Our success is based on what you do, and if you make a decision, we're going to live with it."
Brown, naturally, got a crash-course in that lesson three years ago.
A transfer from Paloma Valley when his family lived in Menifee, Brown arrived at Vista Murrieta as a sophomore, won the starting job and had his hands at the control of the offense when the Broncos were looking to build an early 7-0 lead on Corona Centennial in the 2008 quarterfinals.
Then Brown went heads up with top recruit Vontaze Burfict (Arizona State) and lost his grip on the ball. The Huskies scooped and scored and ran the Broncos out of the building on their way to a 41-14 victory and ultimately a state title run.
Three years later, on the cusp of another meeting with Centennial, that play still resonates with Brown.
"I knew they had some big players, they were a good football team and I was just coming off an injury," Brown said. "I was young."
"I've grown tremendously on and off the field as a player and a person," he added. "Football has taught me a lot ---- not just football, but in life. I've learned how to be disciplined, how to play with a team, how to be accountable and how to have fun.
"I've learned a lot."
Matured might be a better word.
After learning on the go as a sophomore, Brown came into his own last year, throwing for 1,800 yards and 18 scores while rushing for 900 more yards and 15 additional touchdowns as Vista Murrieta made its first championship game appearance.
Since then, Brown has accepted a scholarship to Utah and has surpassed most of last year's numbers ---- 1,538 yards and 19 TDs through the air, 985 yards, 18 scores on the ground, and one TD reception ---- in becoming the team's unquestioned leader on and off the field.
"He wants the ball in his hands; that's what's so great about him," said Spencer Giron, a three-year starter at center. "He says, ‘Let me get the ball and we'll do this,' and we have confidence in him.
"We've seen him make plays and we've seen him, time and time again, perform."
None of it surprises Candaele. Not the improv punt fakes, the rocket throws, the lumbering runs, nor ---- least of all ---- Brown's successes.
"He's played at a high level for four years ---- three on varsity ---- and the game is starting to slow down for him," Candaele said. "He's starting to see more, understand more, make changes and want the ball. When he was younger, he just wanted to give the ball to someone else."
Now he doesn't want to give it up.
At least not if it means passing up a chance to deliver a hit at the end of a bruising run, like Brown did when he lowered his shoulder and laid out a defender at the goal line in scoring his team's first offensive touchdown against Corona Santiago in Week 2.
Later, in the opening round of the playoffs, after some words exchanged between the Broncos and Covina Charter Oak defenders, Brown jogged to the sideline and asked the coaches to call a running play aimed at certain vocal defender.
Several plays later, Brown got the lick he was looking for en route to his team' s 28-7 victory.
"That's how he is," right guard Zayde Khalil said. "He likes getting the ball, putting it in his own hands and delivering those hits. He'd rather run somebody over than juke somebody out. …
"When he puts that helmet on, he's a different person. He's a beast."
Penny Brown, of course, still sees her boy in the man that scoops her up each Friday night.
"You see him and he's got this man's body," she said. "But to me, he smiles and I still see my 5-year-old boy."