Former Auburn receiver Camden Brown had an incredibly efficient and highlight-worthy showing during his NFL preseason debut for the Dallas Cowboys on Saturday. Brown amassed 62 yards and two touchdowns on three catches in a 17-7 win over the Seattle Seahawks. Those three catches came on three targets.
What a far cry from the receiver Bryan Harsin and Hugh Freeze coached on the Plains during his three years in orange and blue. It wasn't a far cry from his one year at Georgia Southern, where he amassed 65 catches for 1,079 yards and a Sun Belt-leading 14 touchdowns, though.
Brown's debut was literally perfect. As Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer revealed, Brown performs up to that standard every day in practice.
“The game’s not too big for him. He does that every day in practice. We see it all the time,” Schottenheimer said. “He’s been doing this the whole time. What I love about him is he does the little things, too. You watch him on special teams, in one-on-one drills, he realizes that’s how you make this football team.”
Brown even referenced his mindset at AU and GSU after the game while explaining his brilliant professional debut.
“When the ball is in the air, it’s mine,” Brown said. “That’s always been a mindset, from Georgia Southern and Auburn, and just having that mentality, because I feel like just playing football in general is having the right mentality.”
Unfortunately, Brown never got the chance to display that mindset in action much on the Tigers. That's despite being an immediate standout during his very first fall camp back in 2022 as a freshman.
Camden Brown was wasted all three years he was at Auburn
Brown was a freshman under Harsin, so the Potato Man isn't the worst offender. Harsin did flip him from Pitt close to signing day, after all. Then again, he didn't have a quarterback who could air the ball down the field in 2022, with running back Jarquez Hunter finishing with the third-highest receiving yards from mostly HB screens. Brown had just nine catches and 123 yards, but his two touchdowns had him tied for second in receiving TDs with Hunter.
Brutal. And yet, it was Freeze who fumbled Brown's talent even worse. Particularly during the 2023 season, since there was an influx of options (KeAndre Lambert-Smith, the Freeze Four) Freeze personally recruited for the 2024 team who made sense to target more.
In 2023, guys like Caleb Burton III, Jay Fair, and Ja'Varrius Johnson were all bigger priorities in the offense. Brown had a higher ceiling than all of them. That was clear from the jump.
Auburn can claim Camden Brown, but the WR was held back on the Plains
Whatever Brown does at the next level, Auburn will have a claim to it in some sense. Brown spent most of his collegiate career in Lee County, Alabama. If he becomes Dak Prescott's next great weapon in Dallas, we all know where Brown got his start.
And yet, Georgia Southern was the program that gave him his only collegiate spotlight.
Brown is one of the great what-ifs of the losing era of Auburn football from 2021-2025 under Harsin and Freeze. Whenever the program is good again, we can't forget that someone as good as Brown was still walking through the doors during the team's lowest point.
Still, he is a microcosm of what the Tigers wasted during that era.
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