Bell: Brandon Browner, Seahawks bound for Super Bowl reunion
PHOENIX -- Brandon Browner swears that he saw this matchup coming all along.
It's one thing for Browner to cap his first season with the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX. But this is so much sweeter for Browner – once a card-carrying member of the Legion of Boom -- because the Seattle Seahawks are here, too.
"They're my boys," Browner told Paste BN Sports recently. "One of the brothers, we're going to have bragging rights all offseason. I'm trying to be the one."
Browner's reunion is one of the many compelling storylines for a run-up to a Super Bowl that has been overshadowed by all of the drama linked to Deflategate.
He would have been in last year's Super Bowl with the Seahawks if not for a highly-contested drug suspension. Browner had a "missed" drug test that occurred while he wasn't even in the NFL, which was counted by the league as a strike factored into a one-year ban after a failed test. It was ultimately settled after the threat of a lawsuit, and his suspension reduced to four games.
"It happened so fast," said Browner, who signed a three-year free agent deal with the Patriots in March. "It seemed like yesterday I was talking to my family and my family was like, 'You're going to meet up with those boys at the Super Bowl.' To be honest, I had no doubt in my mind. It's crazy that it happened so fast.
Browner was so excited about the prospects of this particular matchup that he had no qualms about watching the end of the Seahawks' dramatic overtime victory over the Green Bay Packers in the NFC title game in the locker room, even while getting set to play in the AFC Championship Game.
"Looking at that game, it almost looked like they weren't going to make it out of there," he said.
Browner has remained close to some of his former teammates. Despite the suspension that caused him to miss last year's Super Bowl, he was awarded a ring and made the trip to the White House with the Seahawks.
Now, having established himself as the starter opposite Darrelle Revis to form a duo that gives New England the type of physical presence on the corners that Seattle possesses, he's locked in to the notion of preventing the Seahawks from repeating as champions.
When someone asked after the AFC title game whether the Seahawks presented the toughest matchup the Patriots have faced all season, Browner surprisingly gave a non-Patriots type of response.
"I don't see them as the toughest matchup, but I think their defense and our defense matches up well," he said. "Russell Wilson is a tough quarterback – he's a tough athlete, I should say. Marshawn Lynch does what he does. It's tough. They're the champs for a reason."
A game, he added, that he's been thinking about for months.
If Browner is bitter about losing his opportunity to play in last year's Super Bowl, he doesn't readily show it. While he doesn't enjoy dwelling on the circumstances of the failed marijuana tests that resulted in his suspension, he told me recently how he's attempting to be more open with the media.
It's also apparent that he's fit well into the Patriots locker room, bolstered by a high energy level.
"You've seen him," Patriots safety Devin McCourty told Paste BN Sports. "He's on 100 every day. He's been even more amped up since the playoffs started."
There's one topic, though, that seems to make Browner clam up in a hurry.
Who's better? Revis or Richard Sherman?
"Oh, noooo!" Browner responded recently. "I'm not even going there."
Follow Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell.
