Brown Carving Out Role in Deep Linebacker Room

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — With a stat sheet in his hand, Tony Elliott stood in front of his football team and singled out several of the many standouts in Virginia’s season-opening rout of NC State at Scott Stadium.

Among those UVA’s fifth-year head coach cited in the home locker room, to rousing applause from their teammates, were quarterback Beau Pribula, tailback Xavier Brown, defensive end Fisher Camac and safety Brandyn Hillman.

Accolades are nothing new for those veterans. Not so for another player Elliott praised: Myles Brown (no relation to Xavier). The third-year linebacker has yet to start a game for Virginia, but he recorded a team-high eight tackles last weekend in the Cavaliers’ 34-8 win over the Wolfpack.

Hearing his teammates’ cheers “was a special moment,” the soft-spoken Brown said Tuesday at the Hardie Center, “knowing that I worked hard in the offseason for times like this, to be able to go on the field and show what I can do.”

It’s not easy to get on the field for UVA at linebacker. All-America candidate Kam Robinson, who’s coming back from a knee injury, was held out of the opener as a precaution, but linebackers coach Mike Adams still had multiple options from which to choose, including Maddox Marcellus, Landon Danley, Caleb Hardy, Justin Rowe and Brown.

“Reps are hard to come by,” Adams said, “and once you get deep like this, you’ve got a battle.”

The eight tackles were a career high for Brown, who played primarily on special teams last season. He’s still a mainstay on those units, but six of his stops against NC State came on plays from scrimmage.

“He does a great job of tracking the ball and making himself get to it, [with the mindset that] ‘I want to make the tackle every snap,’ ” Adams said. “A linebacker has to kind of approach it like that, or he ends up just being blocked all the time.

“So he was active, productive, played with good energy. He was physical when he did tackle. There's always all kinds of little things to work on, but it was great to see, because now he's got super confidence. Our players love him.”

Statement 𝙈𝙖𝙙𝙚.

Week 1 Cinematic Recap | NC State#GoHoos🔶⚔️🔷 pic.twitter.com/r72Wb2Fm8Q

— Virginia Football (@UVAFootball) September 2, 2026

Born and raised in Columbia, S.C., Brown enrolled at UVA in January 2024. About a month later, Elliott hired Adams to coach the Cavaliers’ linebackers. Brown, who stands 6-foot-3, weighed only 189 pounds when he arrived on Grounds, but his potential was clear.

“We knew his frame and the size and length and all those pieces were what we were wanting there, what we wanted to grow [linebackers] into,” Adams recalled. “But you knew it was going to take a while, just because that's a huge transition and [it would take time] to get his body right. He had the frame, but he didn't have any of the power and the girth you need to really take people on yet. But what you saw was, he always had great vision, he was smart, he could get himself off blocks. Even as a young kid, he could just kind of pop off a lot of things and stay alive.”

Brown, who turns 21 next week, now weighs 227 pounds, and he’s added 200 pounds to his squat, 100 to his bench press and 100 to his power clean, said Adam Smotherman, UVA’s head strength and conditioning coach for football. Moreover, Smotherman said, Brown has improved in all of his jumps, sprints and shuttles.

As a true freshman in 2024, Brown appeared in three games. He played in all 14 last season and recorded eight tackles.

“It was a slow burner,” Adams said of Brown’s growth as a player.

A turning point for Brown came after the 2025 season. He wasn’t satisfied with playing mainly on special teams, and he attacked his offseason training.

“I think I just took it more serious,” Brown said. “I just really wanted to play on the defense and get on the field and get my body bigger and stronger to be able to compete.”

Smotherman said: “He’s always been committed. This year he took a big step forward in developing his body to battle every day as a linebacker.”

This offseason, Adams said, was “the first time you saw Myles get his body right. And that is so huge for a linebacker, because now they feel confident about the things I'm asking them to do that they have to do. Well, you're not going to do it when you don't believe in your body. You feel like you're going to not be successful and something's going to crack. But once you get your body right, you start trying things and realizing, all right, I can actually aggressively attack that block, or that running back.”

Brown, who wears jersey No. 13, starts on three special-teams units: punt, kickoff and kickoff return.

“He won’t come off any of those,” Adams said. “He’s gotten to where he’s good at them.”

Brown would start on punt return, too, but return specialist Josiah Abdullah also wears No. 13, and they can’t be on the field at the same time.

Asked if he’d thought about asking Abdullah to change numbers, Brown shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “That’s his number, too.”

Brown said he takes prides in contributing on special teams, “because that shows I can make plays wherever I'm at on the field, and I’m helping the team regardless of whether I’m on defense or not.”

When the Cavaliers were short-handed in the secondary during spring practice in 2025, Brown moved temporarily back to safety.

“I enjoyed it,” said Brown, who added that the experience helped him sharpen his pass-coverage skills.

Brown gained a deeper understanding of UVA’s defensive concepts when he lined up in the secondary, Adams said, and “it allowed him just to run and tackle people and do more of that. But we even knew then that once he really built his body, he'd be an asset to us in the box.”

Growing up in Columbia, Brown rooted not for the hometown Gamecocks but for the Oregon Ducks and their game-breaking quarterback, Marcus Mariota. Brown earned all-state honors at Ridge View High School, where his brother, Tyson, preceded him on the football team. Their parents are former student-athletes at Newberry College in South Carolina: mother Fredricka in basketball and volleyball, father Dwayne in football.

Among the schools that offered Brown scholarships were Army, Miami-Ohio, Charlotte and South Carolina State. Virginia was the first Power-5 program to offer him, and Brown says he never doubted his ability to compete at that level.

“I knew I could play anywhere,” he said.

He knew two players at Virginia when he arrived in January 2024: Danley and wide receiver Suderian Harrison, both of whom are from South Carolina too. (Harrison now plays at East Tennessee State.)

Brown’s first year at UVA wasn’t easy. He wasn’t used to being away from his parents and “having to think for myself,” Brown said. “But then as time went on, I got used to it being on my own. Being around my teammates really helped too.”

He’s living with defensive backs Keke Adams and Patrick Campbell and wide receiver Triston Ward this year, and Brown can also lean on his fellow linebackers.

“Great room,” Adams said. “It’s competitive, but they really like each other. They hang out with each other. Especially those older guys, they're all really close. They've been together now for a few years.”

The Cavaliers don’t play again until Friday, Sept. 11, when they host Norfolk State at Scott Stadium. Brown turns 21 next week, and his brother is coming up to Charlottesville this weekend to celebrate with him.

A sociology major, Brown said he’s enjoyed his classes at UVA. He’s taking Polish to fulfill his language requirement.

“I just think it’s better than Spanish,” he said. Brown is not fluent in Polish, but “I’m trying,” he said.

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons find him in his Intermediate Polish Language class taught by Dariusz Tolczyk, and he misses the team meetings that precede football practice on those days. That’s OK with his coaches.

“Yes,” Brown said, “because they know school comes first.”

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