Today’s interviewee is first-year Dodge County coach Phillip Brown, whose team is 7-0 for the first time since 2019. Dodge was 1-9 last season. Brown, a Louisiana native, has been on staffs at Thomasville, Colquitt County, Cook and Valdosta before taking the Dodge job in the offseason.
1. What brought you to Georgia in the first place, and then what did you see in the Dodge County job that you liked? “Honestly, my wife brought me to Georgia. She’s from Bainbridge. I had been coaching in Louisiana for about seven years and been at some great programs [winning two state titles as Destrehan] and worked for great coaches. I had no thought that I was going to leave the state. I met my wife, and she wasn’t going to move, so we came here. [Brown met his wife while on a trip to Destin, Fla., and made the long-distance relationship work and got married, settling in Bainbridge initially.] So we came, and it was a blessing. Sometimes when we do things it doesn’t make sense in the moment, but it sure makes a lot of sense now, just coaching in the state of Georgia. There’s such good football here, but also financially, it’s a whole lot better than where I was. What attracted me to Dodge was I had a stint at Thomasville from 2017 to 2019, and we played Dodge in the 2019 season. We went to the semifinals. We played Dodge in the first round at home, and it was a dog fight. We got out of that thing barely with a win. They had good-looking players and played hard. I thought that if one day I wanted to be a head coach and that was an option, I’d consider going after it. I applied and went through the process, and they offered me the job, and here I am. It’s been a good experience.” [Brown most recently was on Valdosta’s staff as special teams coach and outside linebackers coach.]
2. What was your game plan going into this job? What needed the most work, and how did you and your staff address it? “After talking with people and watching film and looking at the roster, we felt we had good players. We had Darrell Johnson [a top-100 national recruit, committed to Alabama], who everybody knows about. The biggest thing we needed to change was culture. I spent the majority of the break here cleaning up the weight room, reorganizing the locker room, just little things, making it look different, so the players understood this was a different program. We developed five things to build the program on. One is Hard Work. This is a blue-collar town, and they come to work every day. Then Energy. When you come to a program that’s 1-9, there’s not a whole lot of energy. No. 3 is Accountability. We built a system to hold each other accountable in the offseason. We formed accountability teams. Each week we’d hold competitions and measure and see where the points were, and in the end, we had a winning team. We don’t have to coach that up as much now. The fourth thing is Resiliency. They lost a lot of close games last year [0-5 in games decided by five points or less]. We built up resiliency in the way we trained in the weight room and on the practice field. The last thing is Team. Everything we do is above us, the coaches and the players. It’s about team and the organization we represent. Take those five and it spells out H-E-A-R-T. You’ve got to have heart to be an Indian and compete every Friday night.”
3. Your best-known player is Darrell Johnson. What is his skill set, and how do you use him? “Man, he’s been awesome since I got here. He was the first kid I met with because I knew if I could get him to buy in, the rest would be easy. He works his tail off, and he’s very quiet and humble. He doesn’t say a ton. He’s not a flashy type of guy. He’s the only athlete I’ve ever coached on defense who has played all three levels in one game. He’s lined up at defensive end, linebacker and safety. I’ve never coached anybody else who could do that. Not to mention he’ll go over on the offensive side and run the football and play quarterback and wide receiver. I’m most proud of the leader he’s developed into on our football team. That’s what has taken us where we were.” [Johnson leads the team in rushing with 580 yards and is tied for first with 30 total tackles.]
4. What would fans see from your team if they watched them on Friday night? What’s your style? What do you do well, and what’s still a work in progress? “When you look at us, you’d say we play hard and physical. On offense, we’ve been able to run the football with success. We’re steadily improving the passing game and continuing to get that area better and better. When you look at us on the defensive side, we’re multiple. We play three down and four down. In the box we do as good a job as most defending the run. We need to continue to do a better job on the backside and coverage at times. The other thing that will stick out is our success on special teams. We’ve blocked a punt four games in a row and scored six touchdowns on kickoff returns. Special teams is something we work on every day. I came from Valdosta, where I ran the special teams. We put our best players on special teams. When you’re on there, we want you to be a game changer. Some of our best players have made big plays on special teams. Against Washington County, Duke, our best player, blocked a guy almost 20 yards to allow us to return a kickoff for a touchdown. When you’ve got your best player doing that, it shows you how important it is.”
Produced by Georgia High School Football Daily, a free e-mail newsletter. To join the mailing list, click here.
About the Author
