Long before offensive tackle Orlando Brown Jr. was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs — long before he started preparing to play the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night in Super Bowl LVII — he was a Pot Spring Bluebird.

Born in Baltimore, Orlando is the son of Mira Brown and the late Orlando Brown Sr., who played offensive tackle for the Ravens. He attended Pot Spring Elementary School in Timonium, but ultimately played high school football in Georgia. After starring at Oklahoma, Brown was selected in the third round of the 2018 NFL Draft by the Ravens.

Brown started 42 games over his three seasons in Baltimore, making the Pro Bowl as a right tackle in 2019 and 2020. But with left tackle Ronnie Stanley playing Brown’s preferred position in Baltimore, Brown requested a trade and was dealt to the Chiefs in April 2021. He’s started all 33 games for Kansas City over the past two seasons, earning two more Pro Bowl honors, and is set to become a free agent this offseason.

In December 2019, Brown visited his former elementary school, an event that staff and students recalled fondly this week. Looming at 6 feet, 8 inches tall, weighing about 350 pounds and wearing glasses, he appeared more like a mild professor than a professional football player. Orlando greeted excited students with handshakes and high-fives as they arrived to school. He then visited several classrooms that were decked out in purple and listened intently to students’ reading.

Brown was escorted to the gym for an assembly where the Bluebirds had ditched their usual colors to instead wear Ravens purple and black.

“I was really excited to meet someone famous and to know he went to my school,” Alice de Leon, a second grader at the time, said. “He said we should always work out, work hard, eat healthy things and drink lots of water.”

The elder Brown, known as “Zeus,” spent 12 seasons in the NFL and arrived in Baltimore when the Browns, who had signed him as an undrafted free agent, moved the franchise prior to the 1996 season. He went back to Cleveland as a free agent in 1999, but was hit in the right eye by an errant penalty flag during a game that December and, due to partial blindness, missed the next three seasons.

He returned to the Ravens in 2003 and played the final three seasons of his career in Baltimore, ultimately settling there and working in the restaurant business.

After Brown Sr. suddenly died at the age of 40 of complications from undiagnosed diabetes, his son worked to raise awareness about the disease. Now a father himself, Brown has become an advocate for increased testing for Type 1 diabetes and has worked with physicians and researchers at TrialNet.org to spread the word. This past fall, he donated $50,000 to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, to help with the cause.

So this Sunday, far away from State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, there will be a flock of young people from Timonium will be cheering on their fellow Bluebird in Super Bowl LVII.

Reporter Jonas Shaffer contributed to this story.

MC Curran is a creative consultant, publicist and producer. She is a proud graduate of the Baltimore County school system, an alumna of UNC Wilmington, the University of Miami, and Harvard Business School Online. She currently resides on the Upper West Side with her Tibetan terrier puppy, Maher of New York, who has her own Instagram: @maher_of_newyork.