Every Day Is a Triumph For Redskins' Brown

He also says he was in a car when a crime was committed in Palm Beach at the time. Brown was the only person in the car who escaped police; the others were arrested and spent several years in prison.

"I was basically on the streets for almost two years, not going to school, doing the things I shouldn't be doing, getting in and out of trouble," Brown said. "Just waking up where I lived there was trouble; I mean, I was in it, in the mix, full throttle, full throttle. I just did what I had to do to feed myself."

"He had to become the man of that house at a very young age, and he was the backbone of that family," said James "Puppy" Wright, another of Brown's assistant coaches in high school, and a primary reason that Brown ended up at West Virginia. "His mother didn't want him out in the street, but he told her he couldn't worry about school at that time, and he did what he had to do."

A Legend in South Florida

By the summer of 1996, Brown was unsure if he would ever play football again, but his reputation for winning neighborhood bets and performing athletic feats was spreading. Tolbert Bain, a standout defensive back at the University of Miami from 1985 to 1987 who was a respected high school coach in the area, kept hearing about this puny kid who could easily dunk a basketball and jump over parked cars. (Brown stands only about 5 feet 7 now, though the Redskins list him at 5-10.)

"Antonio's name was always ringing in the streets," Moss said. "Everybody knew who he was because of what he could do on the field. He's a legend in South Florida."

Bain was an assistant coach at Miami Central High, and some of the local drug dealers in Liberty City told him where they could find Brown. They wanted to see Brown use his talent -- some drug dealers even purchased him a car the year before to alleviate the need for him to ride the bus to Douglas MacArthur -- and knew Bain was looking for players who had some "thug" in them, as Brown put it.

What Bain saw left him speechless. Brown could start from a near standstill and leap to the top of a dumpster. Then, he took a running start and flew over the hood of Bain's Pathfinder, cleared the sport-utility vehicle and landed on the other side. "My jaw just dropped," Bain said. "He did it so effortlessly."

Bain invited Brown to join his team for an informal summer practice. Brown showed up in long baggy shorts, a Bob Marley T-shirt and dreadlocks. Despite his size, he said he wanted to play running back. No one knew what to expect, and head coach Roger Coffey was hesitant to put Brown in drills, particularly with Najeh Davenport, who went on to star for Miami and is now with the Green Bay Packers, already in his backfield.

Brown was about to sneak out of the gym when Bain intervened, urging Coffey to "put the little hoodlum in." Boykins sneaked him into a few routes with the receivers.

"I knew right there we had something special," Boykins said. "He's the best athlete I've coached to this day, and I've had some great ones. Santana Moss and Antonio played against each other in high school, and Santana couldn't do half the things Antonio could do."

Brown was interested in transferring to Miami Central if possible, and Bain approached some administrators he knew at MacArthur to initiate the process.

"When I first met him, he didn't trust anyone," Bain said. "He'd never really had any positive male role models in his life, but the boys in the neighborhood told him I was all right, and he could trust me, and he started to do that."