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uva recruiting Cavaliers Land Five-Star DT Andrew Brown By Brad Franklin As many fathers do, Andrew Brown Sr. remembers vividly the day his son was born. The doctor who delivered his son made a prediction after seeing the newborn child. Little could he have known how accurate his prognostication would turn out to be. "Andrew was 24 inches long, and he weighed 13 pounds," Brown Sr. recalled. "The doctor said, 'Wow. This kid is going to play football!' From day one, that was out there. And I'm looking at him thinking, 'Yeah, I think so too.' He was just made for it." A higher power may have given him the size but both Andrews had to play their roles. The father says he couldn't be more proud of the way his son, now a 6-3, 298-pound defensive lineman bound for the University of Virginia, made the most of what he was given even when times were tough. It wasn't always good, especially in December 2007 when the younger Brown lost his mother, Sonia Carter. In the pain and the loss, somehow he managed to still go about chasing his own dreams with a bright smile and a charismatic personality. But at times it was certainly a grind. Brown Sr. said his son "has really, really worked hard for me and for himself" the last five years. A confident yet humble kid, his son fell in love with football at an early age. "He was 4 years old, and he's out there playing with 7-year-olds," his father recalled. "Andrew was still bigger than everybody." Over the years, Brown Sr. served as an AAU basketball coach for his son as well as the line coach with the 757 Sports Academy. Whether on Rivals.com ranks Brown as the No. 3 player in Virginia, the nation's top defensive tackle and the No. 7 overall prospect in the class of 2014. Photo by Brad Franklin the sideline or watching from the stands, he saw his son mature. "He played a lot of basketball, and he played football at the same time. Sometimes he was going to multiple practices at the same time," his father said. "He couldn't run. He never could run when he was younger. He'd go down the court, and the other kids were already coming back. There was that balance in there to keep him in shape, keep his stamina up." By the time he was in the seventh grade, the younger Brown was already up to 6‑0 and 277 pounds. The work continued as both father and son watched hour after hour of footage of the great defensive linemen and the not so great ones, too. "We watched a lot of Michael Strahan," Brown said. "We watched a lot of Warren Sapp. And then there were high school players that we watched.