Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Yesterday, Brown’s lawyer released a lengthy statement on Twitter claiming the Bucs ignored Brown’s ankle injury and played it off as less serious than it actually was.
The former Steeler—and now former Buc—will now go through waivers and be made available to any team that wants him. Wouldn’t it be crazy if we saw him in the playoffs?
Yesterday, Brown’s lawyer released a lengthy statement on Twitter claiming the Bucs ignored Brown’s ankle injury and played it off as less serious than it actually was. Brown went on to say that when he tried to inform Bucs head coach Bruce Arians that he wasn’t able to play through the injury, Arians dismissed him (or as Brown later put it in his own statement, “threw me out like an animal”).
Arians has come out and claimed that Brown was upset due to his lack of targets, and many have pointed to incentives on Brown’s contract that had certain stats Brown needed to get in order to make a specific amount of money to support this theory.
However, Antonio Brown faced a similar situation last season with incentives and Brady even called that little touch pass to make sure the receiver got to his milestones, so it wouldn’t really make sense for Brown or the Bucs to butt heads over that.
AB also posted on his Instagram story (following that very technically worded statement released by his lawyer) a meme of Brady, Arians and Brown photoshopped onto a Home Alone 2 movie poster, which if you remember is also called “Lost in New York.” Sunday’s game was in New York against the Jets.
Brown also released screenshots of text messages with Bruce Arians discussing the injury, and screenshots with Tom Brady’s trainer Alex Guerrero.
The screenshots with Arians implied that BA was certainly aware of the injury, while the screenshots with Guerrero implied that Brown had paid the trainer $100k to train with one of the co-founders of TB12.
Phew. Ok. I think we got everything.
So now Brown is obviously no longer a Buc, and Tampa Bay will have Mike Evans, recent breakout player and former track star Cyril Grayson and whoever else is lining up at the receiver position.
Losing AB is a huge loss to a team already dealing with a long list of injuries, which may explain part of the reason the Bucs waited so long to ultimately cut the receiver. Perhaps there was an attempt at reconciliation, maybe TB12 was firm on trying to make things work, who knows?
There’s a lot that we don’t know and might not ever know about this situation. Who’s telling the truth? Is it the guy who’s been accused of sexual assault, arrested for felony burglary and was suspended for submitting a fake vaccine card? Or is it the football team that employed a guy with those types of problems while claiming to be a morally upstanding organization? And don’t forget that AB is employed by the NFL, which doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to caring for the health and safety of its money makers… err, athletes.
We might never find out what really happened. The Bucs forcing Brown to play through an injury he feels wasn’t something to mess around with sounds a little out of left field for an organization that hasn’t shown any tendency of mistreating injured players. Still, I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.
Honestly either story being true wouldn’t surprise me. Both sides have shown that they can’t be trusted and are capable of twisting the truth.
