Anthony Brown Jr.’s career has had it all: ups, downs and everything in between.
The sixth-year quarterback has been with two teams, played for two head coaches, suffered two season-ending injuries and now he’s won two quarterback battles.
The former Boston College three-year starter was announced as Oregon’s QB1 by Ducks head coach Mario Cristobal Friday afternoon. Brown beat out freshmen Ty Thompson, Jay Butterfield and Robby Ashford, all of whom will continue to compete for the backup position.
Brown made his Oregon debut during last year’s Pac-12 Championship against USC. He played 12 snaps, mainly replacing then-starter Tyler Shough at the goal line for designed RPO packages. Brown threw a pair of touchdown passes, converted a critical fourth down and helped Oregon chew clock on the final drive of the conference title game.
Cristobal and the Oregon staff liked what they saw. The Ducks gave Brown an expanded role in the Fiesta Bowl against Iowa State. The Cliffwood, New Jersey, native played 27 snaps and completed 12-of-19 passes for 147 yards. He also carried the ball four times for 36 yards and a pair of scores: the first was on a quarterback draw while the second came courtesy of the read option.
Brown’s most impressive drive of the game and maybe his entire career followed an Oregon goal line stop late in the second quarter. The 6-foot-3 dual-threat piloted a nine-play, 98-yard drive that resulted in his final rushing touchdown of the season. Brown completed five passes, all of which went for 10 or more yards, during the series.
Oregon fell to Iowa State, 34-17, but Brown did enough to raise eyebrows. Shough, a redshirt sophomore at the time, transferred to Texas Tech, and Brown decided to return to Oregon for one last hurrah at the college level.
He was named to the Senior Bowl Watch List earlier this summer and is gearing up for his most anticipated season yet as the Ducks are currently ranked No. 11 in the AP Preseason Top 25.
Brown transferred to Oregon in April 2020. He entered the portal a week after the firing of Steve Addazio, who recruited Brown from St. John Vianney, and a few days after reports began surfacing that then-offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian was being poached by Northwestern.
In 28 games with the Eagles, Brown totaled 40 touchdown passes, 20 interceptions and 4,738 passing yards—the seventh most in program history.
He won the starting job in 2017 after redshirting in 2016 and improved each season, upping his yards per pass attempt from 5.3 in 2017 to 9.1 in 2019. Brown’s best year, stats-wise, came in 2018 when he recorded 20 touchdown passes, the most in a single season by a BC quarterback since Matt Ryan in 2007. What made that performance all the more impressive was that Brown was bouncing back from an ACL tear.
It was the first of two ACL injuries that hampered Brown’s BC career and left fans asking “What if?” The second cut his 2019 at least six games short, a season in which he was completing a career-high 59.1% of his passes and posting a 9:2 touchdown-to-interception ratio before he went down for the year. Even his 2018 campaign was afflicted by injury—Brown was knocked out of the Eagles’ “College GameDay”-featured matchup against No. 2 Clemson on BC’s first offensive series.
He’s gotten back up every time, though. And now he has the chance to lead a Pac-12 favorite with an eye toward the College Football Playoff.
