While Brown's defenses were good to very good at times here, there were also many instances when the results of a game led to multiple page threads due to the anger among Boneyarders over the defensive results. A good amount of these came with not only the above mentioned NFL players on the 2012 squad but also some very quality veterans in 2011 (including future second round pick Reyes).
As far as Metsfan's comparison to O'Leary, that would be similar to comparing Ed Orgeron to Nick Saban. What each has accomplished and where each has accomplished it plays a very large role in judging the two.
To my initial comment; it is no secret that a major effort is in place to secure (non UConn/ non athletic department) funding specific to football (in order to allow us to make the necessary moves to improve our current position). I have no idea how successful this has been to date but my guess is that the goal is to find ~ seven people willing to each commit to roughly $1mm annually for a decade to get this to work (a few of the sources may need to be a group to reach their specific $1mm). Brown (if WM chose that direction) is someone we could view as being in our sites if we struck out with every prospective donor.
I believe that if we were to classify the candidates in tiers, we would need to drop down to the fourth tier before we reach the list that included Brown's name. If this happens, the effort that has been put forth over the past few months by our leadership will make the Maginot Line appear as an astounding success in comparison.