If there had happened to be a National Dungeons and Dragons League, Doug Brzezinski may not have ever worn an Eagles uniform.
But there wasn’t, and he did.
“I was not a football fan as a kid growing up, so I didn’t know much. I didn’t start playing until high school,” Brzezinski says. “I got into football because I liked Dungeons and Dragons and this game, Warhammer 40,000. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be a fictional character.
“And then I started playing football, and I’m like, ‘Dude, this sucks. I don’t know what’s happening. It’s confusing.’ But once you start to get into it, you grow, and you get some positive reinforcement.”
That came into being at Boston College, where, after redshirting a year, he started at left guard in every game for four seasons and was named first-team All-Big East twice.
In 1999, the Eagles selected him in the third round of the NFL Draft.
“You get to Philly and I just wasn’t sure where I was walking,” Brzezinski says. “Everything was just brand new. It’s not like today, where there’s all this Internet information and everything like that. But I knew they had a lot of history. And the cool thing was, there’s a guy, Steve Everitt, who was their center, I was a huge fan of his as a kid growing up in Michigan.”
And like Everitt did at center, the rookie started every game beside him at left guard after impressing his position coach, Juan Castillo, and Head Coach Andy Reid.
“Juan was a good dude. He was like, ‘Hey, we’re here to work hard.’ And as an O-lineman, that’s kind of what you do. You’re not necessarily the most physically gifted, but I knew how to work hard. So that was perfect,” Brzezinski says. “And Coach Reid was great because he reminded me of Lee Marvin from the movie The Dirty Dozen. I mean, he was tough, but fair. He was a good guy, approachable, but you knew he was the boss.
“He told us what was expected and gave us the tools to do it. I always felt like he wanted to put us in a position to succeed. And you could see as he was there over time, he evolved. There are some football coaches who get stuck in a dogmatic philosophy of this is what I do. There are certain cultural tendencies they stick to. But I thought he was good with, ‘Alright, this works, this doesn’t work. Let’s throw out what doesn’t work. Let’s stick with what works.’ I loved it. It was awesome.
“I was very fortunate to have so many coaches that were examples like Coach Reid. (John) Harbaugh, (Sean) McDermott, Pat Shurmur, Ron Rivera, all those different guys were all great examples of leadership. Whether it’s sports, business, whatever, as you get older and you start to reflect, you look back on different times and use a lot of stuff that you were taught by those guys.”
While he wasn’t exactly a Warhammer, Brzezinski proved to be a battler in the trenches. He was the only Eagles player to take every step of the season until suffering a stinger in the fourth quarter of the Week 15 game against New England, which caused him to sit out two series.
The following season, in 2000, Brzezinski played on special teams and left guard in short-yard situations. And in 2001 and ’02, he helped the Eagles win 23 of 32 games and reach back-to-back NFC Championship Games. He felt the key to their success began with Reid.
“The whole thing was culture,” Brzezinski says. “Coach Reid would describe, ‘This is what I want out of our offense. I want to have team specialties. I want to build a bully. I want to build a thing where people show up here and this is a home-field advantage.’
“The fans definitely made it a home-field advantage, but he’s like, ‘We’re the aggressors. We’re not waiting. We’re the ones that you come in and know you’re in for a dog fight.’ X’s and O’s are great, but it was all culture-driven. I thought he did a great job of giving us direction of what he wants, what he expects from us.”
Playing with an assortment of teammates during his four seasons with Philadelphia before going on to finish his six-year career with Carolina, Brzezinski appreciated that each had their own story of how they made it to the NFL.
“I remember when Bubba (Miller) got hurt, I could back up, but I was having issues snapping that day,” he says. “And this is when we had Hank Fraley, who I think was third on our depth chart. But Hank stepped in and he could snap and he could run. He started off not really having been recruited out of high school, was an undrafted free agent, and just took that opportunity and was ready and ran with it.
“And (Jason) Kelce was a guy where I was a huge fan when he came in. I remember watching him play and, ‘This guy’s awesome.’ Everybody talks about his brother, Travis, and I’m like, ‘People don’t know that Jason was an exponentially better center than Travis is as a tight end.’ And I don’t mean this is a disrespectful way to Travis, but he just was awesome. Again, his story is great. Not highly-recruited. Just kept going and kept going.”
After having not missed a game as an Eagle, Brzezinski had shoulder problems and broke his pelvis while with the Panthers. The injuries led to him leaving the game in 2005.
He then began a second career in sales a year later and would eventually take a job in the Baltimore/Washington, DC, area as a cover rep with Stryker, a medical technology company.
“The thing I liked about it was, you’re in the operating room and you needed to be on point,” Brzezinski says. “A rep covers the surgery to make sure all the implants are there; all the instruments are there. And if the doctor has a question about a spec, or how this thing works, or something like that, then you’re like an on-hand resource.
“It was something where I liked that aspect of converting all things. I love games and puzzles and nerdy-type stuff, so it was perfect. You have a doctor asking ‘How thick is this piece? Is it 4.8 or is it 4.9?’ You had to know all those numbers.
“It was like playing football. You needed to plan for every contingency before it happened. You needed to be ready. And I’ll tell you what, I was more stressed starting that job then when I was playing because there’s a patient on the table, there’s a doctor in the room, and there’s nowhere to put that nervous energy.”
This past May, Brzezinski joined STERIS, a medical manufacturing company which offers products including sterilizers, surgical tables, examination lights, and other operating room equipment.
Making their home in Brookville, Maryland, Brzezinski and his wife, Elise, have two sports-minded children: Natalia, 15, who plays lacrosse, hockey, and field hockey; and Luke, 13, who plays football, baseball, and basketball.
“And my wife, who was not a football fan at all, is a rabid Eagles fan now. It’s uncomfortable to watch Eagles games with her because she’s like, ‘Don’t talk! Be quiet!’ Her and my son are like savage, maniac Eagles fans,” Brzezinski laughed.
For the past three years, he has coached the offensive line at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland.
“I try to instill in the kids, because they’re always evaluating each other and checking the stuff online, that all that stuff is smoke and mirrors,” Brzezinski says. “The only thing that matters is that you show up every day and keep pushing yourself.
“It’s fun teaching X’s and O’s stuff because I remember what worked for me and what didn’t work. But when you see a kid, when you see the lights come on … The best thing about these lessons is that you can apply that to anything that you do in your life. Because nobody just shows up how they are. If you want to get someplace, remove every excuse of why you can’t do it and just go do it.”
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