AJ Brown was in the news Monday, but not exactly in a good way.
Brown dislocated his thumb during a training camp practice with the New England Patriots. While Patriots fans are seeing that for the first time, Ole Miss fans have seen it before.
He dislocated the same thumb in a game against Arkansas and played the rest of the game and season. So when it happened again in New England’s indoor practice, he reacted like someone who had already passed this test once.
Thumb out, thumb back in, keep moving. And that’s exactly what he did.
The play itself was fairly routine until it wasn’t. Brown was running a route against Christian Gonzalez in 1‑on‑1s. He stopped as the ball was thrown, Gonzalez picked it off, and Brown reached down for his left hand. Trainers met him at midfield and did what needed to be done.
But Brown didn’t miss anything after that.
He jumped right back into practice, worked through whatever discomfort was left, and finished the session without a single rep off. He even connected with Drake Maye four times in team drills, two of them for touchdowns. If you didn’t know about the thumb, you wouldn’t have guessed it.
Head coach Mike Vrabel wasn’t exactly sweating it either.
“I think he’s going to be OK,” Vrabel said. He even joked that linemen pop fingers back into place every other snap and nobody rushes to make it a headline. Brown’s moment just happened to involve a star receiver and a camera.
Brown didn’t try to dramatize it. He admitted it hurt, admitted it knocked him out of rhythm for a moment, and admitted that getting back into that flow‑state zone took a little work. But he also made it clear he wasn’t coming out of practice because of a thumb.
“The game is what it is,” Brown said. “You’re going to get bumps and bruises, and you have to keep going. I know it’s practice, but I’m not coming out of practice. Thumb out of place? You keep going.”
That’s classic AJ Brown. Built like a power forward, wired like a middle linebacker, and convinced that pain is something you acknowledge only after the whistle blows.
The knee questions followed him to New England, but this thumb thing isn’t joining them. It’s not a storyline. It’s barely a footnote.
Training camp is supposed to reveal things about a team. In this case, it reminded everyone of something they already knew.
AJ Brown is going to play. And if his thumb wanders out of place again, he’ll probably just put it back and run the next route.
