This year, the Seahawks put that tag on cornerback Marcus Trufant instead. That made Brown available, but as one of the top young kickers in the game, the Rams knew they had to act quickly once Jeff Wilkins decided to retire. While Linehan was at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis last week, Wilkins met with Rams doctors about his nagging leg and back injuries, and spoke with special teams coach Al Roberts. "The concerns came up that (the injury) was not improving," Linehan said. "Jeff was discouraged. ... Al got the feeling that Jeff was leaning towards retiring. So that started to really factor into our free agency plan." According to Linehan, the injury started in Wilkins' leg but then caused discomfort in his back. At first, Wilkins began to feel pain on longer field goal attempts. The condition progressed to the point where he began to feel discomfort just sitting down. A couple of injections of medication didn't help.
The Rams got their answer from Wilkins on Friday, the first day of free agency. "It was a hard thing," Linehan said. "Because you don't want to force a person's decision, but you have to at least have an idea because you have to have a plan." Wilkins, 35, had hoped to finish the final two years of his contract. "The Rams family lost arguably the best kicker in franchise history due to retirement," Linehan said. "That was a tough thing to deal with. An even tougher thing was what were we going to do to replace such a guy?"
Thus began the brief but intense courtship of Brown. Until he received the call from the Rams, his free agent discussions had centered on Kansas City and Atlanta, as well as possibly re-signing with Seattle. "Out of nowhere, my agent calls me and says, 'Hey, Jeff Wilkins just retired,'" Brown said. In St. Louis, Brown is much closer to his parents' home in Tulsa, Okla., than he was in Seattle. And no kicker doesn't prefer working in a climate-controlled dome. Those were pluses about playing with the Rams. So was $14 million. "I was kind of nervous about (going to) another team in the division," Brown said. "I was like, 'I'm going to get massacred by the Seattle fans now.'"
