When he could still get around with the use of a cane, Bryan Braman rallied the family and friends who had gathered to care for him and decided he’d take care of them instead.
It was ice cream night, he decided.
“He insisted all of us go to the store and get everything for sundaes,” said his half-sister, Marissa Dire. “Gourmet toppings. Gluten-free ice cream. You name it. Then we came home and his daughters tore into all of it.”
That was the Braman manner and motto — “Kill, maim, destroy.” Even when it came to ice cream.
“It was one of the last good nights we had with him,” said Dire, “and so much fun.”
Those times came to an end on Wednesday night, when the 38-year-old Super Bowl champion and a true Spokane athletic phenomenon died after an 18-month battle with high-grade diffuse B-cell lymphoma.
His all-out style and freakish athleticism led the Shadle Park High School graduate to a seven-year National Football League career as a special teams dynamo, first with Houston (where he was a Pro Bowl alternate in 2012) and then with the Philadelphia Eagles. Before that, those traits also allowed Braman to pull himself from a hardscrabble childhood that included too many addresses — or no address at all — and a flubbed first chance at college football at Idaho.
In 2018, his story was perhaps the most remarkable of all out of Super Bowl 52, won by the Eagles 41-33 over New England, after Braman had been signed in mid-December to bolster Philadelphia’s kick teams.
If that was the culmination of his football career, there was an unknown shadow that accompanied it. In the spring of 2024, Braman phoned his friend Josh Powell — Shadle’s quarterback from their high school days — about the discovery of a large stomach tumor that had been growing for years.
“I’m pretty sure I played in the Super Bowl with that tumor,” he told Powell.
There was early optimism among Braman and his family about his condition being treatable after the removal of the tumor. He returned to Spokane and lived with his mother, Tina Fields-Braman, and sought care at Holy Family and Summit Cancer Centers, and later at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.
“When he told me, I broke down,” said Powell, “and he shot back at me, ‘No, we’re going to beat this thing. This is nothing but another chapter in my story.’ “
But about six weeks ago, after multiple rounds of chemotherapy had proved futile, doctors told the family Braman was no longer strong enough for further treatment or surgery. Through it all, he had resisted making his condition public, saying that, “I don’t want to put that energy on anybody,” but eventually relented.
And on June 25, the house Dire and fiancé Cole Wright share began filling up. Braman’s daughters, Blakely, 11, and 8-year-old Marlowe arrived with their mother from Texas. Friends, former coaches and teammates came, too, over the next two weeks.
“The whole house was filled with so much love and compassion and collectively, we all cared for him,” said Dire. “He taught Cole how to administer antibiotics through the PICC line. Anything we did — a sponge bath, getting him water, medication — he was just so grateful that we were all there. As hard as it was, his last few weeks were beautiful.”
Overcoming hard times was a thread that ran through Braman’s life.
His family bounced from house to house in Hillyard, Cheney and north Spokane before he turned out for football at Shadle — Powell’s father would eventually buy him cleats — and began showing off an explosive athleticism. He grew to 6-foot-5, hitting with abandon and even running back kicks. He was even more remarkable on the track — high jumping 6-10, long jumping more than 23 feet and throwing the javelin nearly 200, while also running on Shadle’s swift short relay team.
But he lasted just two semesters at Idaho and reverted to street life back in Spokane before summoning the courage to reach back to his high school counselor, JuJu Predisik, who steered both Braman and Powell to a friend at Long Beach City College.
“That’s where the switch was flipped,” Powell said. “I think he realized that was his last chance and you saw the determination. He’s playing defensive end at 205 or 210 pounds in a junior college league full of USC and UCLA bounce-backs. He had to learn how to play football — and that’s when he became a powerful player.”
After finishing college at West Texas A&M, Braman hooked on as a free-agent with the Texans and the highlights started finding their way to YouTube — blocked punts, mostly, but notably a head-to-head tackle of Tennessee punt returner Mark Mariani after Braman had lost his helmet.
Tennessee Titans punt returner Marc Mariani is tackled by a helmetless Bryan Braman on Jan. 1, 2012 at Reliant Stadium Houston. (Getty Images)
Tennessee Titans punt returner Marc Mariani is tackled by a helmetless Bryan Braman on Jan. 1, 2012 at Reliant Stadium Houston. (Getty Images)
He signed a two-year, $3.15 million contract with Philadelphia in 2014 and lasted three — then got the call again during the 2017 playoffs and promptly blocked another punt in a divisional round win.
“A lot of the trauma he experienced in childhood sculpted him into the resilient man he was,” said Dire. “It gave him the ability to set aside the negative and overcome.
“He was also bigger than life. He was the one paying for everything — ‘Round is on me!’ — or if you needed this or that, he’d get you 10 of them instead of one. He’d give you the shirt off his back — or buy 20 of them, and designer shirts. He never thought twice about it.”
Braman is also survived by another half-sister, Alyssa Fields. No services have been scheduled at this time.