This had to be a first for Art Rooney II.
It isn’t every day a rich NFL owner meets with a man nicknamed “Big Chest,” who has spent the past six weeks making him and his organization look like fools. As if their get-together Tuesday wasn’t surreal enough, there was a requisite picture of Rooney with his arm around a beaming Antonio Brown’s shoulders that Brown immediately posted on social media.
I give Rooney a lot of credit. Somehow, he forced a wry smile after what surely was the most nonsensical meeting of his professional career. I would love to know what he was thinking at the time the picture was snapped.
These were wasted minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.
That’s my best guess.
Brown made the meeting sound like a lovefest that ended, apparently, with Brown and Rooney agreeing that it was time for the Steelers to trade Brown. “They shook hands. They hugged,” Brown’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, told ESPN. “We want everybody to win here.”
Sure, they do.
Brown didn’t care much about doing what’s right for the Steelers when he skipped out on the team before the final regular-season game against Cincinnati. He didn’t care enough about Rooney to take his or Mike Tomlin’s calls for weeks afterward. He didn’t care that he made a brief, bizarre appearance during Super Bowl week that prompted former Steelers linebacker Chad Brown to tweet, “For real AB? You look and sound too high to be in public.” He didn’t care that he sabotaged his trade value during the past weekend when he ripped Ben Roethlisberger and Tomlin on Twitter, or Monday night when he did an Instagram video soliciting offers from other teams and letting them know he wants a new contract even though he’s under contract to the Steelers for three more years.
“If your team got guaranteed money, tell them call me,” Brown said. “AB can’t do no more unguarantees.”
Nor, I suppose, can Mr. Big Chest, as Brown said Monday night he prefers to be called.
You can’t make this stuff up.
It must have taken all of Rooney’s patience and a lot of antacids for him to sit down with Brown. The best thing Rooney can hope for from the meeting is that Brown will stay quiet on social media until a trade is completed. As it is, it’s going to be nearly impossible to get anything approaching equal value in a deal.
A longtime NFL general manager told Ed Bouchette and me at the Super Bowl that fans and media always overvalue a player’s worth on the trade market. He acknowledged it takes only one interested team to go hard after Brown but said he would start by offering a sixth-round pick for him and possibly turning it into a conditional fifth- or fourth-round pick depending on Brown’s and the team’s success. And that was before Brown’s latest hurtful work on Twitter and Instagram.
There are a few more reasons other teams should be frightened off by Brown. A civil suit against him is pending after he was accused of throwing objects from a 14th-floor balcony in April, nearly striking a young boy below. It’s believed the NFL also is monitoring a domestic-abuse allegation against him in January. Brown denied wrongdoing in both cases, but that doesn’t mean the league won’t suspend him for violating its personal-conduct policy. Beyond that, he will be 31 in July and his yards-per-catch average dipped from 15.2 in 2017 to 12.5 last season. I might not be the smartest guy in the room, but I’m thinking there might be a correlation.
Are you going to give up a high draft choice and take on all of that baggage if you are an opposing general manager?
I didn’t think so.
Rosenhaus said he’s looking for a win-win situation, but it seems more likely that it will be lose-lose.
The Steelers are going to lose the best receiver in franchise history for little in return. They also are strengthening a bad precedent that allows a player to talk or misbehave his way off the team. LeGarrette Blount. James Harrison. Martavis Bryant. Now Big Chest. What’s to stop JuJu Smith-Schuster or James Conner from taking the same approach down the road?
Just wondering.
Brown also could lose by going to a team that won’t tolerate his erratic, me-first behavior and might not have a franchise quarterback. For all his problems with Tomlin and Roethlisberger, he is coming off the best six-year stretch by a receiver in NFL history. He and Roethlisberger combined for 797 receptions – more than any quarterback-receiver duo but Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison (953) – and 74 touchdowns, 15 last season. In their final game together before Brown went AWOL, Brown had 14 catches for 185 yards and two touchdowns in a loss to New Orleans. Good luck to him matching that production elsewhere.
That doesn’t mean Rooney is wrong for concluding that Brown must go. All good things end eventually, right? Trading Brown is the only chance Tomlin has of regaining control of his locker room.
Sadly, one of my lasting memories of Brown will be of that picture Tuesday with Rooney. I just looked at it again. Excuse me while I go look for some antacids of my own.
Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com and Twitter@RonCookPG. Ron Cook can be heard on the “Cook and Joe” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.
First Published: February 19, 2019, 9:56 p.m.
