A.J. Brown pulled up to the “most dangerous gym in America” on a Friday in May, alone in his Honda Accord.

It was just weeks removed from the Philadelphia Eagles‘ 40-22 destruction of the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX when Brown reached out to trainer Haddy Abdel on social media. This wasn’t the first time a well-known figure had been captivated by the chaotic, grueling workouts conducted at Diamond Gym in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Most, though, just talk a good game before cooling on the idea of being thrust into an environment where hulking bodybuilders double as drill sergeants, extracting every ounce of effort and discipline from a client list that, according to Abdel, includes men recently out of jail or battling drug addiction. But Brown was different.

“He pulled up … where we train at, in his car by himself, and showed up and said, ‘I’m ready to work.’ It was one of the craziest experiences I’ve had with anybody that’s ever come to train with us before,” Abdel said.

“He’s like, ‘I came here for this. I got all the money now. I have everything I’ve ever wanted in my life.’ And when you get that, and you taste that, it’s easy to get complacent, it’s easy to forget where you came from. He wanted to remember where he came from.”

The closing sequence of the two-hour session looked like something out of Rocky IV. Brown, dressed in black Eagles sweatpants and a black sweatshirt with the hoodie pulled up, lifted a barbell with large chains on either end to his chest and ripped off 10 standing military presses. He released the weight, gripped a block of wood on the floor and did 15 pushups. The crowd circled around him as he rose and walked to the last station. Screams intensified. A boy, maybe 10, commanded Brown over and over to “Lift that s—!” An exhausted Brown stepped to the bar and deadlifted around 600 pounds in one fluid motion, cementing his standing in the room.

“I had to go to a place, I had to go to my childhood, had to think about some s— I went through,” Brown said. “I got everything I ever wanted in life, bro. I had to go back down to my childhood, me living in that trailer, starving bro. Then I thought about [my] son. I’ve got a little boy, he motivated me. I said, ‘I’m not going to give up with my son watching me.'”

The longer Brown stands on the public stage, the more layers he reveals. He is a boxer. A reader. A mental health advocate. A philanthropist. A family man.

He’s part introvert, part performer. A team-first player with the highest of personal ambitions. A leader with style that can be confused for selfish interests. Such complexities make him one of the more captivating, and misunderstood, players in the NFL.

This offseason, he has pulled back the curtain further, opening up about the scars that he carries from his childhood. By tapping into his roots, he is at once bridging the divide between himself and those he wishes to mentor and ensuring he stays close to the flame that fueled his launch to stardom.

Entering his seventh season, the 28-year-old from Starkville, Mississippi, is a three-time Pro Bowl honoree and three-time Associated Press All-Pro. He holds the record for most single-season receptions by an Eagles receiver (106) and is the only Eagle to produce multiple seasons of 1,400-plus receiving yards. He added champion to the résumé in February.

The last accomplishment fell short of personal expectation, with the ecstasy of winning a Lombardi Trophy lasting all of two days. “I thought my hard work would be justified by winning it all,” Brown wrote on Feb. 12. “It wasn’t.”

Shortly after that Instagram post, Brown had a conversation with longtime trainer Joey Guarascio that delved deeper into his psyche.

“It almost made him mad because the feeling after the Super Bowl was like, ‘That’s it? Like there needs to be more. We need to make this thing a dynasty. I need to be a Hall of Famer,'” Guarascio said.

“Every time we talk, it’s, ‘I want to leave a legacy that’s memorable. I want people to talk about the Eagles like they do the New England Patriots in the 2000s.’ He always had an idea and a belief that he could do it, and now that he’s starting to get the physical evidence behind it, it’s just, you know, he’s talking it into fruition.”

All indications are that Brown is “hungrier than ever,” as Guarascio put it, as the Eagles begin their title defense against the rival Dallas Cowboys Thursday night (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC). “I truly feel like I’m the best in the league,” Brown said, “and I want to put a stamp on it.” But the mission reaches well beyond football.

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BROWN TOOK A seat in front of a group of kids inside the Delaware County Juvenile Detention Center in Chester, Pennsylvania, earlier this offseason and began to divulge details about his past that he had never shared publicly.

The A.J. Brown Foundation is launching an internship program this October to create a pathway for children in the system. Beyond that initiative, Brown wants to serve as a direct mentor to them, and knew he needed to get vulnerable to earn their trust.

“I didn’t want it to look like I’m this celebrity coming in and just telling those guys what to do,” Brown said. “I wanted to let them know I made mistakes, too.”

He was 11 or 12 when his parents Arthur Brown and Josette Robertson split up, he said, and took the news hard.

“I felt like my mom divorced me, too,” Brown said. “I knew firsthand about losing a first love.”

Brown acted out in the name of getting his parents’ attention. He failed the seventh grade. That same year, he said he joined a gang called Gangster Disciples.

He went on to detail missteps, including transgressions that could have led to his arrest but never did.

“I didn’t get in trouble with the police, God willing, but I made mistakes. And these mistakes that you all have made doesn’t define you,” Brown said. “My path doesn’t define me.”

Brown credits the guiding hand of his father as well as advice from a respected member of the neighborhood for redirecting him. “Go play ball,” he told him while offering his protection. “This s— ain’t for you.”

“I used sports to detach myself,” Brown said.

He threw himself into baseball and basketball. With football, there wasn’t exactly an immediate connection. His former position coach at Starkville, Willie Gillespie, recalls Brown not taking to a Bull-in-the-Ring drill during eighth grade practice, where the player in the middle of a circle of kids crashes into the ball carrier.

“He wasn’t real happy about that. Too much physical stuff going on,” Gillespie said.

Brown declined to play football in ninth grade but gave it another go as a sophomore after not being chosen for the varsity basketball team.

He had grown a couple inches by that point and looked the part in uniform, leading the coaches to agree: “We’ve got to find a way for this kid to play.” Brown was a top-level center fielder — he would go on to be selected in the 19th round of the 2016 MLB draft by the San Diego Padres — so receiver made the most sense since it allowed Brown to use his ball-tracking abilities.

He still didn’t love the contact element of the sport but that started to change when the coaches also began to play him at safety, where he would lead the team in interceptions in 10th grade despite playing the role part time.

But it was on offense where Brown really began to shine. Gillespie remembers a play early in the 10th grade season against West Point where Brown caught a ball on a slant and took it about 40 yards for a touchdown. “I think the confidence at that point really took off,” he said.

Gillespie said Brown and his older sisters Reva and Shareda mainly lived with Arthur, whom he credited with doing “a tremendous job” in raising them. He added that A.J. and Robertson reestablished a connection years ago.

But Gillespie said Brown “carried a lot of baggage” for a long time in respect to his parent’s divorce — an event that Brown said makes him slow to trust to this day.

“He’s such an emotional kid,” Gillespie said. “His emotions run high. I think for a long time, he hid those emotions, and he had so many things that he really didn’t understand and didn’t feel good about it.

“Everybody else was kind of looking at it like football is everything but he was more concerned about family and mom. So, he had those moments where he was really down about those situations. But at the end of the day, he has been truly blessed to play at the top level of football and has been able to change some people’s lives having gone through these experiences. And hopefully it helped to heal him, which I think it has by him opening up and talking about it, mental states and all that type stuff. I think that helped heal him.”

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CYNTHIA MILONS’ FIRST interaction with Brown was on a basketball court. She was a referee for the Starkville Athletic Youth Basketball League then and Brown, by her memory, was no more than 8 years old.

“I just remember him fouling and getting mad. He would always blame me, that I would foul him out,” she said with a laugh. “I just remember him being so competitive.”

Arthur Brown was the coach, “and let’s say A.J. gets his passion from his dad,” Milons added.

Their paths crossed again at Starkville High School when Milons served as Brown’s 10th grade English teacher. Milons’ family is full of athletes, including brother Freddie Milons, a former standout wide receiver at the University of Alabama who was drafted by the Eagles in 2002, and the two bonded over sports.

Milons remembers Brown as a shy, sweet kid with a bright smile who wouldn’t hang around many people outside of his sisters. Whatever behavior problems did come up, she said, would be handled by discussing with Arthur, working under the philosophy that it “takes a village” to raise a child.

Her influence on Brown first came to light in 2017 when he selected Milons to receive national recognition through the Extra Yard for Teachers initiative, complete with Starkville High School receiving a $10,000 grant. It was seen again in a big way during a wild-card playoff win over the Green Bay Packers in January when cameras caught Brown reading on the sideline while dealing with a quiet day at the office, as he finished with one catch for 10 yards.

“That was just hilarious to me,” Milons said. “It was just one of those things, like, Lord, A.J. is just A.J. It doesn’t matter to him what other people say about it. That’s what I love most about him: He just does this thing.”

Milons and Brown talked earlier this summer about that moment, with Brown explaining to her that reading has a calming, connecting effect on him.

play

The story behind A.J. Brown’s sideline book, ‘Inner Excellence’

A.J. Brown sits down with Sal Paolantonio to discuss the impact his sideline reading has had on the Eagles and the NFL community.

The reactions in Starkville were similar to other parts of the country.

“My wife said, ‘What A.J. doing? What are you doing?” said Gillespie. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. I know I ain’t never read a book on no sideline.”

But Gillespie has a unique insight into Brown’s makeup, having known him since he was a child and sharing a sideline with him. He knows when Brown gets animated on the sideline or vents his frustration or, in this case, picks up a book, it’s rooted in being self-critical.

“It’s all about winning. It’s all it’s all about, I could have done more,” he said. “A lot of times he’s upset with himself, not so much with the organization or with the team or teammates. His expectation for himself, sometimes that’s not being met, and that kind of throws him a little bit.”

Plenty of good came from Brown’s sideline reading, including Brown becoming a prominent figure for reading advocacy, complete with his own book list that he circulated online this offseason.

His act encouraged one of the teachers at Starkville High School to put a poster on the wall that still hangs up there today:

“If A.J. BROWN can find time to read,” it says, “YOU CAN TOO.”

“A lot of people here are really proud of what he’s accomplished,” Gillespie said. “I think that the biggest thing he does is he just gives a community hope.”

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BROWN’S SUMMER DID not go exactly as planned, as he spent the bulk of training camp practices on the sideline while he dealt with a hamstring injury — now since healed.

He contributed in other ways — most notably by taking a special interest in receiver Darius Cooper, an undrafted rookie out of Tarleton State.

Cooper (5-foot-11, 210 pounds) has a similar build to Brown, who was the rookie’s favorite player growing up. Brown, in turn, has poured his knowledge into Cooper. There were even times when Brown would walk up to the huddle with Cooper before a play, offering last-second instructions.

“Just being in my ear in practices, telling me different techniques and things to do,” said Cooper, who beat the odds by making the 53-man roster. “It’s just a blessing being under his wing and I’m just grateful to be here.”

On a Sunday in mid-August, Brown traded his uniform for a white button down and suit pants for his trip to Boys’ Latin Middle School in Philadelphia. The gym was filled with students awaiting his arrival. But it was more than just an appearance. The “Fresh Cuts For Success & Mission For Heart” event put on by his foundation offered free haircuts for children about to go back to school as well as school supplies for both students and teachers. After being introduced by the DJ and receiving a loud ovation, Brown went around the room shaking hands and taking pictures with Eagles fans who got to see yet another side to the multidimensional talent.

“When I was younger, I wish I had a mentor,” Brown said. “My father did an excellent job but just to see somebody play a professional sport come back in the community, we didn’t really have that growing up. And I said, ‘I’m going to be that person.'”

Brown acknowledges he was more closed off when he first got into the league. He didn’t show his personality, he said, because he didn’t want to be judged.

He has since shed that protection, layer by layer.

“Now I don’t care,” he said. “I’m going to live my life, I’m going to enjoy myself … I just stopped caring about what people say, honestly.”