Derrick Brown working with a new focus after not starting game at Miami

Okam said he’s noticed a different intensity from Brown over the last week since the bye, taking ownership of his own process and applying it more broadly.

“To me, what he’s done since then, he’s been way more detailed, he’s been a guy who has really been focused, and he’s challenged himself actually now to hold the room to the standard he wants to accomplish for himself,” Okam said.

And make no mistake, that standard is high. Brown was drafted when he was drafted because he has a rare combination of size and power and burst, and his exceptional talent may have contributed, in a way, to his problems against Washington.

“When you’ve been so talented, you think your talent is going to do it,” Okam said. “For him, we’re trying to re-focus him and say your talent shows up when you do everything else right. That’s what’s going to separate you. . . . There aren’t many men in this league who can move like him and have as much natural force as he does. I don’t want to put a cap on a player, but to me, it’s as good as he wants to be.

“What I want every young player to understand is, in this league, it doesn’t matter where you’re drafted; nothing is handed to you. You have to earn everything. I definitely think it re-shifted his focus, and it definitely gave him a chance to reflect and understand where he is in his personal process.”

For Brown, that means being detailed in every moment of practice, from the drill work on pad level — hitting sleds, or coming off the ball through a set of pipes to remind you to stay low — which will help him tap into his physical gifts.

And as he looked back on that Washington tape, as difficult as it was to absorb, he got a reminder of what mattered most as he walked into his home. Seeing his almost 3-year-old son and year-old daughter (she’s now walking so the baby gates are back up) charging at him was a temporary reprieve from a rough day at the office, one he keeps in mind as he comes to work each day.