Brown keeps delivering for CCU

Asked after the game Saturday night when he knew he was going to go all the way on his 93-yard kickoff return for touchdown, Coastal Carolina junior Devin Brown didn’t hesitate with his response.

“From the beginning,” he said simply.

That drew some laughs in the post-game media session, and Brown seemed to indicate he didn’t mean for it to come off quite like that. But ... yeah, he was confident from the start of that kickoff that he was about to add to his already impressive career total.

“After the first two returns we all noticed how the back side on the kickoff team was coming down, so we had a perfect return for that,” he explained. “And once we called it I knew from the beginning from what they were doing and what we could do on that return that it was going to be there and it happened to be there.”

“I called it on the sideline,” junior running back De’Angelo Henderson added.

Brown really has made those dynamic, game-changing plays seem predictable at this point. His touchdown return Saturday night in No. 1/2-ranked Coastal Carolina’s 34-27 win over Western Illinois inside a packed Brooks Stadium was his already second of the young season and the fifth of his career.

With that, he is just one away from matching the all-time FCS record of six set by Hampton’s Jerome Mathis from 2001-04.

And Brown is plenty aware of that – actually, he’s been counting down since he looked up the record online before the season.

“It means a lot to be that close to that type of record,” Brown said. “Me and my roommate [wide receiver Bruce Mapp], we always talk about breaking records so I knew about it.”

For that matter, he thought he might just do it Saturday night as he later took another kickoff back 46 yards before being taken down.

Nevertheless, both returns had pronounced impacts on the game.

The touchdown return, in which he outran the coverage unit to the right edge and raced unimpeded into the end zone, immediately erased Coastal Carolina’s second deficit of the game and gave the Chants’ a 17-14 lead early in the third quarter. And the 46-yard return came midway through the fourth quarter to set up the eventual go-ahead touchdown as the Chants needed only four offensive plays to find the score and go up 34-27.

“Me and Devin are from the same area [Charleston] so there’s something in the water down there,” Henderson, the Chants’ big-play running back, quipped after the game. “But he’s a phenomenal player, he’s a phenomenal athlete. When he came in he was at cornerback. On scout team I needed some breaks at running back and he came over and took over, so I knew he was going to be [successful].

“He’s probably one of the best athletes on the team, fastest guy on the team hands down, so every time he touches the ball he’s liable to [score] every time. And I know the whole team feels that way.”

Chants head coach Joe Moglia had to admit he was a little surprised that Western Illinois kept challenging Brown on kickoffs.

“I thought it was kind of ballsy on their part actually,” Moglia said. “Now give them credit too, there were a couple times where they did come down and they were able to stop us right on the 25 or maybe a little earlier than that.

“But if they want to kick to Devin, I think there’s always going to be a threat that he might take one to the house. I think our guys do a good job of blocking for him.”

Brown has proven to be quite a find – and one of the early recruiting successes for this coaching staff – since joining Coastal Carolina as a preferred walk-on out of James Island Charter High School.

He says he had been invited to a camp at Liberty and had a preferred walk-on offer to Charleston Southern as well, but former Chants offensive lineman Chad Hamilton (also from James Island Charter) encouraged him to come to Coastal Carolina.

And pretty quickly Brown realized his calling in Conway might be as a kick returner.

“Coming in here I played scout team, but I was scout kick returner and I was making plays on and off, but there were all these people ahead of me that were sophomores, juniors and seniors,” he said. “I remember talking to [assistant coach Renato] Diaz and asking him if I could try out returns in the game and I actually made a couple plays my redshirt freshman year. And after that VMI kick, I became a starter right after that.”

Brown’s first kickoff return for touchdown was a 95-yarder against VMI on Oct. 26, 2013, and he’s been building his resume ever since.

Although he is just one away from matching the FCS record for career touchdown returns, Brown has actually set his sights much higher for the rest of the season.

“I’m thinking eight [touchdown returns],” he said of his goal for the fall. “I hope eight. If I get the chance, I’m thinking I can get eight.”

This story was originally published September 20, 2015 at 10:26 PM with the headline "Brown keeps delivering for CCU."