Northwestern football may have struggled in 2021, but two of its former players in the pro ranks have reached the sport’s pinnacle.

Two former Wildcats — defensive end Earnest Brown IV and wide receiver Ben Skowronek — won Super Bowl LVI Sunday night with the Los Angeles Rams. Skowronek had two catches for 12 yards in Los Angeles’s 23-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. 

Brown IV was a four-year player at NU who finished eighth in the Big Ten with nine tackles for loss in 2020. A key cog on the Cats’ Big Ten West championship team, he was picked by the Rams in the fifth round of the 2021 NFL Draft. The Texas native saw no action in 2021 but was on Los Angeles’s roster the entire year. 

Skowronek, by contrast, had a role in the Rams’ offense throughout the season. Like Brown IV, he played four years with the Cats, finishing 10th in the conference in receiving yards in 2017. He transferred to Notre Dame after the 2019 season and helped the Fighting Irish reach the College Football Playoff, parlaying his success into a seventh-round draft selection. 

Los Angeles used Skowronek in 14 regular season games, and he recorded 11 catches for 133 yards. His first catches of the postseason both came in the Super Bowl — one in the first quarter, and one in the third. 

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Twitter: @pandres2001