With a Little Help from my Friend: How Gerran Brown got to Cal

Gerran Brown's name showed up on the Cal roster in January to little fanfare. The annotations were simple, he went to Mater Dei (like a number of players on Cal's roster), and transferred to Cal from Washington. Cal needed more linebackers to begin with, and Brown's addition helped with depth. Through the spring and the fall, Brown asserted himself, and has put himself in a position to play this fall.

"When he came in, nobody knew much about him," defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach Tim DeRuyter said, "but he’s a very smart football player, seems to put himself in the right position to make plays, he’s got some decent athleticism, and I see him playing for us this year. "

The thing is, Brown could have been in Berkeley about six months sooner, as he had a friend pulling for him in the background.

"Last spring ball, 2016, I was on the roster at Washington," Brown explained. "Things weren’t working out there and so I ended up talking, through Malik (McMorris), I got in contact with the coaches, and I was supposed to be here last season, but some things happened and then my app didn’t get in in time for the admissions board to let me in, and then I just went back to UW as a student for the fall quarter."

With that quarter nearing its end, McMorris made a second overture to Brown, and this one reunited the former teammates.

Then in about November," "Malik texted me asking if I still wanted to play and I said to him ‘yeah, I’d love to,’ and then got in contact with the old coaching staff, then luckily I was able to get in that way."

McMorris noted at the time that if his friend was thinking about transferring, why not come join him (and a number of other former Mater Dei standouts) in Berkeley?

"Gerran’s a close friend of mine and we battled a lot through high school," McMorris said, "being on the same team obviously. I knew the UW things wasn’t really going as well and he had told me he was thinking of moving, trying to get out of Washington for reasons. I was like ‘hey man, we could get you at Cal, why not?’

With Brown at Cal now, he's been running with the second team defense, playing behind seniors Devante Downs and Ray Davison, and starting to flash in DeRuyter's blitz packages, something he credits to studying up on the defense during the spring.

"I think it’s just in spring ball I made sure I knew the whole defense," Brown said. "My goal was to know what all 11 guys are doing on the field at all times and that’s helped me to be able to play free and be able to go 110% and not really be guessing what’s happening."

It's worked well for him, as Brown's been a surprise this fall for the Bears, as the former Mater Dei captain will see some time at inside linebacker, along with on special teams units, somewhere where Cal has needed more consistent tacklers. He's been a solid fit for the defense, and he's had no problem with the social transition thanks to his former and current teammates.

"It’s been awesome" Brown said about the transition, "and all the Mater Dei guys, because we played back there, we all are super close, and it was nice, I jumped right in. Nothing really changed, there was really no adjustment period in the social life because it all goes together, and having Malik, who I could always count on in high school, just having him here was awesome."

Though they're on different sides of the ball, they're back on the same team, and roommates now. McMorris is glad to have Brown in the fold.

It’s fun having Gerran around," McMorris said,"another Mater Dei captain on the Golden Bears, that goes a long way."