DJ Brown announces intentions for 2022 season for Fighting Irish

Notre Dame safety DJ Brown announced on his Instagram page on Friday evening that he’s coming back for one more season of college football in South Bend.

He wrote: “Don’t gotta tell your own story…time will. Excited to be back for 1 more.”

Brown’s return is huge for Notre Dame fans, as he snatched three interceptions and racked up 42 tackles in 2021. His three interceptions tied Kyle Hamilton for the most interceptions on the team.

With Brown announcing his return, Notre Dame will have all four members of its post-Kyle Hamilton safety rotation returning. Blessed with tremendous sideline-to-sideline speed and ball skills, Hamilton is expected to be one of the top safety prospects selected in the 2022 NFL Draft.

The 2021 season didn’t begin so smoothly for Brown. In the season-opener against Florida State, he missed a tackle on an 89-yard touchdown run. He was then benched and didn’t play at all the following week against Toledo.

Then he turned it on and got his act together. Against Purdue, he snagged his first interception of the season and racked up a season-high seven tackles. In the UNC game, Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton got ejected for targeting and Brown had to step up in his place. He led the Fighting Irish to a 31-17 win.

In the USC game, Hamilton suffered a season-ending knee injury, which meant Brown had to step up even more the rest of the season.

Then against the Virginia Cavaliers, he pulled in his third interception of 2021.

In other words, he went from being a potential transfer portal prospect to another school, to an important returning piece to the Irish’s 2022 defense.

A member of the 2018 recruiting class, Brown was rated as a three-star prospect, according to the On3 Consensus Rankings. He played his high school football at St. John’s (Washington, D.C.).