Legendary Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks arrived at the perfect moment in franchise history in the summer of 1995.
Brooks, a Pensacola, FL native who helped the Florida State Seminoles win their first national title in 1993, joined a loaded Buccaneers team that also featured Warren Sapp, Mike Alstott, Warrick Dunn, Ronde Barber, Martin Grammatica, and Trent Dilfer.
New Buccaneers head coach Tony Dungy promptly righted the ship with his vaunted Tampa 2 defense from 1995 to 2001.
With Brooks wreaking havoc as an outside linebacker and earning an incredible eleven Pro Bowl selections, Tampa Bay drastically turned its fortunes around.
Brooks, an ironman who never missed a single game in his fourteen-year NFL career, helped the Bucs win their first Super Bowl title in franchise history at the end of a memorable 2002 NFL campaign.
It wasn’t surprising at all when Brooks entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the summer of 2014.
This is Derrick Brooks’s incredible and inspiring football story.
Early Life
Derrick Dewan Brooks was born in Pensacola, FL on August 18, 1973. He has three brothers: Anthony, John, and Mitch.
When Derrick entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH in the summer of 2014, he thanked his stepfather, A.J. Mitchell, for working hard and making ends meet for his family.
Although Mitchell did not advance beyond sixth grade when he was a student, he managed to become a successful breadwinner later on.
Mitchell was a soft-spoken individual who nevertheless could get his point across when the situation called for it.
Derrick recalled the time his stepfather whipped him in front of his classmates when he was in the fifth grade to straighten him out.
“If you didn’t love me enough to whip me, no telling where I was going to be,” Brooks said in his Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement speech thirty years later.
On the other hand, Derrick’s mom, Geraldine Brooks-Mitchell, gave birth to him shortly after earning her high school diploma in 1973.
Geraldine played basketball during her high school days. Although she couldn’t finish her high school basketball career because of her pregnancy, she embarked on a new career as a doting mother to Derrick.
When Derrick wore his gold jacket and addressed the crowd in Canton, OH in 2014, he considered his mom the best tailgater he had ever known. Geraldine was his staunchest supporter from his Pee Wee football days until he wore Tampa Bay Buccaneers red, pewter, orange, and black.
Derrick thanked Geraldine for instilling in him the virtue of humility. She reminded him that no one likes a braggart or show-off. When he took the field during his legendary 14-year pro football career, he let his game do most of the talking.
Brooks attended Booker T. Washington High School in his hometown of Pensacola, FL. He played for the Booker T. Washington Wildcats’ head football coach Jimmy Nichols.
Although Brooks wasn’t the most physically-imposing player on the Wildcats’ roster, Nichols thought his strong character helped him excel on and off the gridiron to the present day.
“Derrick wasn’t that big, wasn’t fast, he wasn’t strong and he really wasn’t that smart,” Nichols told the Pensacola News Journal’s Bill Vilona in the summer of 2015. “But he made all the right choices and did all the work that needed to be done to get to where he is today. He was the real deal in every aspect of his life.”
Who’s got the best caption for this throwback from the Booker T. Washington High School 🏈 days? ⬇️⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/X506x1xlhh
— Derrick Brooks (@DBrooks55) October 24, 2022
Brooks did not let his lack of size deter him. In fact, he considered his hit on an opposing high school quarterback the greatest of his football career.
Brooks leveled the quarterback in the first quarter of the Wildcats’ game against one of their bitter rivals.
The quarterback fumbled the football, and the Wildcats recovered and scored a touchdown to open up the scoring. Brooks’s team went on to beat their rivals and break their longstanding losing streak against them.
Derrick Brooks decided to remain in The Sunshine State and commit to Bobby Bowden’s Florida State Seminoles during his senior season in 1990.
Brooks’s six-year-old sister Latoya helped him clinch his first major life decision in an unusual fashion.
When Bowden visited the Brooks residence in 1990, Latoya climbed up onto his lap from a crawling position on the ground.
Before long, she had fallen asleep in the legendary Seminoles’ head football coach’s arms.
Derrick and his mom Geraldine agreed it was a sign that he would be in good hands with Bowden for the next four years.
Brooks eventually became one of the best pass rushers the Florida State football program has ever produced. He also became an integral part of the 1993 FSU team that won the school’s first national title.
College Days with the Florida State Seminoles
Derrick Brooks attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL from 1991 to 1994. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business communication from FSU.
According to the Tampa Bay Times’s Joe Smith, some Pensacola, FL-based attorneys tried to persuade Brooks to commit to the Florida Gators during his senior season in 1990.
However, Brooks chose FSU because of its proximity to Pensacola, FL, and the quality of education it offered.
Brooks played for legendary Florida State Seminoles head football coach Bobby Bowden. One of Brooks’s teammates was his future teammate with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers: running back Warrick Dunn.
When the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted Brooks some twenty years later, he gave credit to Bowden not just for making him and his teammates better football players but also better men off the gridiron.
“Bobby Bowden – the best ever in my book to coach college football,” Derrick said in his Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement speech. “You not only taught us about the gridiron, but you taught us about keeping our priorities in order.”
Brooks was a scrawny, 190-lb. freshman who played strong safety in the 1991 NCAA campaign. To say he was raw and unpolished was an understatement.
FSU defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews even told Brooks he would pay for his one-way bus ticket back to Pensacola after the latter’s pitiful performance in a scrimmage.
Brooks fell for the quarterback’s play-action fake four consecutive times and drew Andrews’s ire in the process.
Brooks returned to Pensacola, FL, and poured out his sentiments to his mom, Geraldine. She completely threw him off with her response.
“She’s like, ‘Well, son, don’t get beat deep.’ I’m like, ‘Wow.,'” Derrick told the Tampa Bay Times in 2014.
For his part, Andrews admitted to the Tampa Bay Times that he uttered many things during his football coaching career he did not mean. His statement to Brooks in 1991 was one of them.
Before long, Bowden moved Brooks to the linebacker position midway through his freshman season in 1991.
From that position, Derrick would wreak havoc on the opposition until the conclusion of his fourteen-year NFL career.
Not only that, but Brooks evolved into one of the Seminoles’ leaders on the football field. Former Seminoles wide receiver Kez McCorvey even lauded Derrick for his exemplary leadership prowess.
McCorvey’s unforgettable Derrick Brooks moment was stopping a Clemson Tigers running back dead in his tracks on a crucial play in the red zone. Kez swore he never saw somebody hit that hard before.
Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Charlie Ward fondly remembered the time Brooks obliterated a North Carolina State Wolfpack running back on a fourth-and-1 play.
Just like McCorvey, Ward was in awe of something only Derrick Brooks could do on the football field.
Brooks told Smith in 2014 that his all-time favorite moment with the Seminoles was stuffing the Kansas Jayhawks at the goal line in the season opener of the 1993 NCAA campaign.
Brooks and Co. denied the Jayhawks ten times inside the five-yard line. FSU went on to win in a slaughter, 42-0.
Throwback to the Noles Days 🏈 @FSUFootball pic.twitter.com/OGpPifpPO8
— Derrick Brooks (@DBrooks55) November 18, 2022
Florida State edged the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the 1993 Orange Bowl 18-16 to clinch the first national title in program history.
It was like the weight of the world was lifted off Bowden’s shoulders after that impressive win. Brooks and his teammates felt shivers go up their spines after their head coach thanked them numerous times in the postgame locker room, per the Tampa Bay Times.
Brooks didn’t just stand out on the college gridiron. He also stood out in the classroom.
At the time the Seminoles won their first national title in 1993, Brooks had a cumulative 3.89 GPA, per the Tampa Bay Times’s Rick Stroud.
On the flip side, Brooks told Smith his toughest moment at FSU was getting two Cs as a freshman and earning a trip to Bowden’s office.
Bowden told his prized recruit he could do better. He didn’t want to find Brooks getting a GPA lower than 3.5 from that point onward.
That was precisely what Derrick Brooks did.
With Brooks on the Seminoles’ lineup, they had a gaudy 44-5 (.898) win-loss record from 1991 to 1994.
When Derrick Brooks played his final down in the college football ranks in the 1994 NCAA season, he had absolutely no regrets about choosing Florida State.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better college experience,” Brooks told Smith mere days before his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the summer of 2014.
Brooks earned various accolades at the end of his college football career.
Brooks, a two-time Consensus All-American linebacker and three-time First-Team All-ACC selection, also earned 1993 ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors. He also won the 1994 Jack Lambert Trophy as that year’s best college linebacker.
Derrick Brooks eventually became a vital cog of a Tampa Bay Buccaneers team that rose to prominence in the mid-1990s to early 2000s.
Pro Football Career
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers made Derrick Brooks the 28th overall selection of the 1995 NFL Draft.
Brooks defied the odds yet again when he broke into the pro football ranks in the mid-1990s.
Buccaneers Radio Network and FSU play-by-play man Gene Deckerhoff recalled many naysayers saying Brooks was too small to play linebacker prior to his freshman season with the Florida State Seminoles in 1991.
The doubters also said the same thing when Tampa Bay selected Brooks late in the first round of the NFL Draft four years later.
The 6’0″, 235-lb. Brooks proved them wrong during his fourteen-year NFL career. In fact, Deckerhoff boldly predicted that he would enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014 three years earlier.
Lo and behold, Deckerhoff’s prediction came true.
When first-year Buccaneers coach Tony Dungy called Brooks and his fellow 1995 NFL Draft class member defensive tackle Warren Sapp into his office before the 1996 NFL campaign, he told them he expected the duo to become Tampa Bay’s version of Jack Ham and “Mean” Joe Greene of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers.
Brooks and Sapp, who eventually became the stonewalls of the Bucs’ defense for the next eight seasons, exchanged looks and accepted Dungy’s challenge.
Behind the exploits of Brooks, Sapp, fullback Mike Alstott, strong safety John Lynch, quarterback Trent Dilfer, running back Warrick Dunn, placekicker Martin Grammatica, and cornerback Ronde Barber, Tampa Bay, the NFL’s laughingstock of the 1980s, emerged as serious Super Bowl contenders in the mid-1990s to early 2000s.
When Dungy took over the head coaching reins in 1995, Derrick Brooks’s pro football career took off.
Brooks’s 80 tackles were the second-most among Tampa Bay’s defensive players in his rookie year in 1995. He promptly earned All-Rookie honors for his efforts that year.
Brooks then earned five of his eventual Pro Bowl selections with Dungy calling the shots for the Bucs.
Brooks also earned five First-Team All-Pro and four Second-Team All-Pro selections during his fourteen-year NFL career from 1995 to 2008.
Better yet, Tampa Bay turned its woebegone fortunes around with Dungy as head coach.
Throwback to Monday Night Football circa 2002 🏈
What a block by @WarrenSapp @Buccaneers pic.twitter.com/5G3Z8krEJr
— Derrick Brooks (@DBrooks55) December 5, 2022
The Buccaneers averaged nine wins per season during the Tony Dungy era from 1996 to 2001. It was a far cry from the disastrous first two decades of the franchise’s existence.
Much of the credit went to a punishing Tampa 2 defense that featured Brooks, Sapp, Lynch, and Barber.
In fact, the Buccaneers had the league’s best total defense in 1998 and 1999. That trend continued well into Jon Gruden’s tenure with the Buccaneers from 2002 to 2008 – the last six years of Derrick Brooks’s pro football career.
“Derrick was our engine,” Alstott, a six-time Pro Bowl fullback, told Buccaneers.com in 2011. “Derrick was our leader of this football team. He’s a big reason for what we did for so many years and had that great run.”
Tampa Bay, which made just three postseason appearances in its first twenty years of existence from 1976 to 1995, made the postseason four times with Dungy on the sidelines.
The Buccaneers reached the 1999 NFC Championship Game against Kurt Warner and the eventual Super Bowl champions St Louis Rams on January 23, 2000. It was just the second time the Bucs had reached the NFC title game in franchise history.
Unfortunately for Brooks and Co., the Rams prevailed in a low-scoring affair, 11-6.
As the Tony Dungy era in Tampa Bay wound down, Derrick Brooks earned yet another accolade.
Brooks won the 2000 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award – a distinction the league gives to the player who exemplifies excellence on the football field and in the community.
After Tampa Bay lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2001 NFC Wild Card Game, 31-9, management fired Dungy and replaced him with former Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden.
The Buccaneers were a juggernaut in Gruden’s first year on the job. Tampa Bay won twelve games and its first Super Bowl title in franchise history.
Ironically, Gruden and the Bucs beat his former team, the Oakland Raiders, in Super Bowl XXXVII, 48-21.
As for Derrick Brooks, he earned the first and only Super Bowl ring of his legendary fourteen-year pro football career.
Throwback Thursday, Super Bowl XXXVII Edition: Derrick Brooks intercepts Rich Gannon and takes it to the house. Gene Deckerhoff on the call #GoBucs pic.twitter.com/WA1tVq1cnE
— Bucs Rays Bolts (@BucsRaysBoltsYT) January 28, 2021
It was an unforgettable year for Brooks. He had 118 combined tackles, 88 solo tackles, one forced fumble, one fumble recovery, one touchdown off a fumble recovery, five interceptions, and three pick-sixes during the 2002 NFL season.
To nobody’s surprise, Derrick Brooks earned 2002 NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors.
Brooks’s career after football also picked up around this time. Then-Florida governor Jeb Bush appointed him to Florida State University’s board of trustees in 2003. Brooks served in that capacity for the next eight years.
The Bucs had several up-and-down seasons in the last five years of the Jon Gruden era in Tampa Bay from 2003 to 2008.
The Buccaneers averaged barely eight wins per year during those five years. They made the postseason twice and lost in the NFC Wild Card Game each time.
Despite Tampa Bay’s inconsistency in the latter years of Derrick Brooks’s pro football career, he still played at a high level.
Brooks earned five Pro Bowl, one Second-Team All-Pro, and two First-Team All-Pro selections from 2003 to 2008. He also won the prestigious Bart Starr Award and Byron “Whizzer” White Award in 2004.
Even as Brooks piled up on various football-related accolades, his zest for learning never wavered.
Brooks, who earned his master’s degree in business communications from Florida State University in 1999, added another feather to his cap in 2006.
Brooks earned his doctorate in humane letters from St. Leo’s University that year. He was already a twelve-year NFL veteran when he received the degree.
Then-Florida governor Charlie Crist appointed Brooks as the chairman of the governor’s council on physical fitness in 2007. Brooks also became a member of the organization’s board of directors that year.
Brooks’s main responsibility was to help combat the growing issue of childhood obesity in the state of Florida.
Brooks and former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo, Jr. co-founded Brooks DeBartolo Collegiate High School (BDCHS) in 2007.
The Tampa Bay, FL-based school boasts a college and career preparatory program that helps develop its 600 students into productive adult citizens.
Happy 48th Birthday To One Of The Greatest Linebackers Of All Time Derrick Brooks 🏈.
*Super Bowl champion
*11× Pro Bowl
*Pro Bowl MVP
*5× First-team All-Pro
*4× Second-team All-Pro
*Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year
*NFL Defensive Player of the Year pic.twitter.com/HhDlduOoS8— TimeoutSPORTS__ (@TimeoutSPORTS3) April 18, 2021
The Buccaneers waived Derrick Brooks on February 25, 2009. Tampa Bay also released Joey Galloway, Ike Hilliard, Warrick Dunn, and Cato June to usher in the new Raheem Morris era. The moves created more than $10 million in salary cap space for Tampa Bay.
Brooks officially retired in the summer of 2010. He did not play a single down in the 2009 NFL season.
Brooks finished his fourteen-year gridiron career with 1,713 combined tackles, 1,300 solo tackles, 25 interceptions, six pick-sixes, 24 forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries, one touchdown off a fumble recovery, and 68 tackles for loss.
Brooks was one of the ironmen of his generation. He never sat out a game in his iconic fourteen-year NFL career. He also never missed a start once Tony Dungy named him one of his starting linebackers in the 1996 NFL season.
No less than Atlanta Falcons Pro Bowl quarterback Michael Vick thought Derrick Brooks was an elite game-changer during his pro football career.
“I never feared anybody, never feared Derrick or playing against him, but I didn’t like playing Derrick,” Vick told The Athletic’s Greg Auman in the fall of 2021. “He was like a Ray Lewis, a guy who could win the game on defense. That’s who Derrick Brooks was.”
Post-Football Life
Derrick Brooks and his wife Carol have two sons, DeCalon and Darius, and two daughters, Brianna and Dania. They currently reside in the Tampa Bay, FL area.
Derrick Brooks became a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the summer of 2014. His son, DeCalon, was his presenter.
Part of Brooks’s enshrinement speech reads:
“Someone also taught me that most people will forget what you say. Some will forget what you do. But no one will ever forget how you made them feel…As I go into this Hall of Fame, I want you guys to know that I’m going to do my best to make the Hall of Fame better because God has blessed me to be a part of it.”
Brooks became a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Ring of Honor on September 14, 2014. The franchise retired his No. 55 jersey on the same day.
According to Buccaneers.com’s Scott Smith, Brooks became just the third player in team history after Warren Sapp (No. 99) and Lee Roy Selmon (No. 63) to have their jersey numbers retired.
Brooks is also a member of the Capital One Academic All-America Hall of Fame.
Brooks is a co-investor of the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, a double-A affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins.
According to the Pensacola News Journal’s Bill Vilona, Blue Wahoos majority owners Quint and Rishy Studer reached out to Brooks, a prominent face in the Pensacola, FL community, in 2018.
Professional golfer and Pensacola, FL native Bubba Watson also has an ownership stake with the team.
Aside from Brooks’s commitment to the Blue Wahoos, he is also juggling responsibilities in other professional sports leagues.
Brooks has also been the executive vice president for corporate and community development of the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Tampa Bay Lightning since 2017. He joined Vinik Sports Group, a company Lightning owner Jeff Vinik founded, that year.
Brooks also currently works as a field officer of the NFL and NFL Players Association.
Dress to impress tonight and support Breast Cancer Awareness in the pink as we get ready for our home opener here at Amalie Arena.
We kick off our home opener for the 2022 hockey season 🏒 @TBLightning pic.twitter.com/3BN3rt9zES
— Derrick Brooks (@DBrooks55) October 18, 2022
Brooks told the Pensacola News Journal in the summer of 2022 that some people kid him because he has more Stanley Cup rings (two) than Super Bowl rings (one). The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup titles under the leadership of head coach Jon Cooper in 2020 and 2021.
Before Brooks’s current commitments in the NHL, NFL, and NFLPA, he served as the team president of the Arena Football League’s (AFL) defunct Tampa Bay Storm until 2017.
Derrick Brooks has lived a busy life since he officially retired from the National Football League in the summer of 2010.
In the months leading up to Brooks’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction in 2014, it wasn’t unusual for him to put in fourteen-hour work days.
When he served as the Storm’s team president, he typically reported for work at 8 a.m.
After clocking in, Brooks reviewed several team photographs for media use, went over options for the Storm’s team-building excursion, analyzed sponsorship commitments, and discussed team issues with team vice president of football operations Jeff Gooch.
Brooks usually attended football-related meetings until early afternoon. He then proceeded to his local college preparatory school for board meetings several hours later.
As Brooks’s day wound down, he recorded his weekly SiriusXM NFL Radio show and signed various football-related paraphernalia. By the time Brooks finished signing the last item, it was nearing 10 p.m.
Even though Derrick Brooks is no longer playing on the NFL gridiron, he’s still living the dream during his retirement years.
“It’s something that is very humbling,” Brooks told Vilona in the summer of 2022. “I hope I have created opportunities for men who look like me to come behind me to set their own paths and do their own thing.”
Derrick Brooks has long been an active philanthropist in the Tampa Bay, FL area. His awards for community service include the Tampa Sports Club’s Citizen of the Year award and the Tampa Sports Commission’s Lee Roy Selmon Lifetime Achievement Award.
Brooks helps run his Derrick Brooks Charities, an organization that helps uplift the lives of youth in Tampa Bay, FL.
We were able to get @DBrooks55's thoughts on the upcoming @Buccaneers season, while his Derrick Brooks Charities and @PDQFreshFood team up to give back to youth through educational programs and opportunities. #GoBucs @10TampaBay pic.twitter.com/DxIPGYMSn0
— Evan Closky (@ECloskyWTSP) July 11, 2022
Brooks’s son DeCalon followed in his footsteps on the gridiron. The latter played linebacker for his alma mater, the Florida State Seminoles, from 2017 to 2021.
Derrick Brooks has also ventured into the filmmaking industry during his retirement years. He was the executive producer of the 2016 movie, The Birth of a Nation.
Brooks also co-produced Challenger, a 2018 movie based on the Space Shuttle Challenger catastrophe, with former New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Brooks
https://www.profootballhof.com/players/derrick-brooks/
https://www.buccaneers.com/news/brooks-55-to-be-retired-12960887
https://seminoles.com/sports/football/roster/decalon-brooks/
https://www.profootballhof.com/news/2018/10/derrick-brooks-to-work-on-challenger-movie/
https://db55.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/derrick-brooks-bio-2021-1.pdf
https://db55.org/brooks-debartolo-collegiate-high-school/
https://www.espn.com/nfl/news/story?id=3933807
https://www.tampabay.com/sports/football/bucs/a-day-in-the-life-of-derrick-brooks/2190060/
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