PRO FOOTBALL ’94 / SEASON PREVIEWS : The Beat Goes On for Receiver Brown : Raiders: Hefty new contract for the would-be drummer contains some catchy numbers.

Tim Brown became one of the NFL’s highest-paid players last March when the Raiders matched a four-year, $11-million contract he had conditionally signed with the Denver Broncos less than a week earlier.

With a $2.4-million signing bonus and a guaranteed $3 million for the fourth year, this seemed to be the best deal of Brown’s life. Which would have been true for most, but not for Brown.

The most important agreement in Brown’s life occurred 15 years ago when he was a 5-foot-4, 135-pound freshman at Woodrow Wilson High in Dallas. It was reached with his father, Eugene, who secretly signed a paper that allowed Tim to play on the freshman football team instead of becoming a drummer in the band, as his mother, Josephine,

wanted.

“He just wanted to play and he kept asking me until we worked out a deal,” Eugene Brown said. “His mother had him in the band and she just didn’t agree with him playing football.”

For nearly two months, the arrangement was kept secret from Josephine until the bandleader started calling to ask about Tim’s frequent absences, and she noticed her son’s name in a local newspaper’s sports section.

“She was really upset when she found out,” Eugene said. “She was mad at both of us for weeks. I signed the slip only because Timmy kept bugging me to do so.”

Little did the Browns know at the time that their son later would become the NFL’s best wide receiver/punt returner.

“Over the years, I’ve told that story quite a few times, but it always makes me laugh,” said Josephine Brown, a devout Pentecostal churchgoer who objects to competition. “In fact, just the other day, I talked to Tim on the phone and told him that his little sister did the same thing to get out of band to play basketball at her school.”

Josephine might laugh now, but at the time she was seriously concerned about her son’s welfare.

For years, she watched Tim tag along with his older brother, Donald Kelly, and try to play with the bigger kids. But because of his size, he often seemed to be on the verge of getting injured.

“He was like any other little brother who would pester me all the time,” said Kelly, who is eight years older than Tim. “I would take him outside and teach him how to catch. I would throw the football as hard as I could from about 10 yards or so and make him catch it with his hands. I would always yell at him because I thought the ball was hitting his body, but he really was catching it with his hands.”

Tim Brown may have been short, but he had heart and desire. These qualities, gained from his close-knit family, have helped throughout a career that has followed a pattern of bouncing back from adversity.

“Yeah, I learned early that when good things happen, you better be ready for something bad,” said Brown, who was a Pro Bowl starter last season after finishing with 80 catches and an AFC-best 1,180 yards.

Brown went on to compete not only in football at Woodrow Wilson but also in basketball and track. And in addition to his drumming in the band, he was vice president of the senior class and sports editor of the school’s newspaper.

“I really didn’t think Tim would reach that high in sports because he was so small,” said Eugene, who worked as a cement mason for more than 20 years. “But he always had the will.”

In high school, Brown was good enough to catch the eyes of recruiters and decided to attend Notre Dame over Southern Methodist and Nebraska.

As a freshman at Notre Dame, Brown’s toughness was called upon again after he fumbled his first kickoff against Purdue, in front of 60,672 fans. Then, to make matters worse, Brown found himself playing a halfback role in a running offense under Gerry Faust.

But instead of packing it in and returning to Dallas, Brown remained at South Bend, Ind., and his career was given new life the next year when Lou Holtz became coach.

In the next three seasons, Brown prospered with the Irish, winning the Heisman Trophy as a senior, and was selected by the Raiders in the first round of the 1988 draft.

Brown arrived in Los Angeles with great expectations and lived up to them in his first season. As a rookie, he was named to the Pro Bowl after catching 43 passes for 725 yards and accounting for 2,316 all-purpose yards.

Then, in 1989, Brown’s season ended in the first game of the regular season when he suffered a knee injury, which also hampered him the next year as he struggled to make 18 catches for 265 yards.

But Brown bounced back with a solid season in 1991 and gained his second Pro Bowl berth after leading the AFC in punt returns with an average of 11.4 yards.

Despite his success, there was still a question of whether he could become one of the NFL’s top receivers.

“I think that the coaches always knew that I could play,” Brown said. “It was just I wasn’t being used as an every-down player. I only needed a more defined role.”

In 1992, Brown finally got his chance to become a full-time starter, and he responded by leading the team in catches, receiving yardage and touchdowns. But that was only a hint of what was to come with the arrival of quarterback Jeff Hostetler as a free agent from the New York Giants.

“The thing with Timmy was that he had been unlucky when it came to playing with a real good quarterback,” Eugene said. “Once Hostetler came, that’s all Timmy talks about--playing with him. Timmy believes in Hostetler 100%.”

The way Brown and Hostetler started together last season in the Raiders’ 24-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings, one would have thought they had worked together throughout the off-season. But it was simply good chemistry that finally produced success, Brown said.

“I knew Jeff was an accurate passer and that’s important to me,” Brown said. “Before the first game, however, we really didn’t click because we hadn’t worked with each other much. But it didn’t take long after that to see that he was what we needed.”

Brown caught a career-high nine passes against the Seattle Seahawks the next week, before the Raiders inexplicably stopped calling his number. In the next two games, Brown hardly saw the ball as the Raiders lost to the Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Chiefs.

That’s when the bond between Hostetler and Brown strengthened.

At a practice before the Raiders played the New York Jets, Hostetler told the team that to get back on the winning track, they needed to get the ball to Brown.

“Once he said that, it was like lighting a fire under (me),” Brown said. “I took that like a challenge, and that was the turning point of the season.”

Brown resumed burning secondaries from coast to coast. He caught 10 passes for 183 yards against the Buffalo Bills on Dec. 5, then made 11 catches for 173 yards against the Denver Broncos to close the regular season on Jan. 2.

Brown wound up having four games with 100 or more receiving yards and became the Raiders’ all-time punt return leader as he finished third in the AFC with an 11.6-yard average.

After the season ended with a second-round playoff loss at Buffalo, the Raiders named Brown as a transition player, meaning he was allowed to shop himself to other teams with the possibility of the Raiders matching any proposed deal.

For nearly two months, Brown did not know where the Raiders stood as he fielded offers from nearly every team in the NFL that wanted to upgrade its passing attack.

“It was the best and the worst all at the same time,” Brown said about signing with Denver and waiting for the Raiders to match. “You knew that it was good for you financially, but having to wait to know if the Raiders wanted you was tough. After a while, it was unnerving.”

Brown didn’t know that the Raiders were going to match Denver’s contract until a reporter called him one day before the deadline--a call that caught him by surprise.

“At that point, I really didn’t feel like they were going to match,” Brown said. “I really felt that way because only a day before, the Raiders signed (defensive back) Albert Lewis.”

Now, with Hostetler in his second year and fellow receivers Alexander Wright, James Jett, Rocket Ismail and Daryl Hobbs providing increased support, Brown feels like an elder statesman.

“It hasn’t been defined whether I will catch 50 balls, 75 or 100,” Brown said. “I don’t know yet. But I do know that my role is to help the team win a championship, and I will do whatever it takes.”