Antonio Brown still remains a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Brown is merely three days removed from publicly abandoning his team after taking off his uniform, throwing his gloves and undershirt into the crowd, and then running off the sideline and through the tunnel at MetLife Stadium as his teammates continued to play against the New York Jets.
Those images, it was initially believed, would be the last ones of the professional football career of Antonio Brown. It appears, however, that may have been a quick reaction rather than reality.
“If Antonio Brown wants a job on another team in the NFL, he can have one,” NFL reporter Josina Anderson tweeted Tuesday. “That is not an opinion. That is what I know.”
Anderson did not indicate the team she was referring to.
The circumstances leading up to Brown’s in-game exit have been all over the place before taking a bit of a turn Tuesday.
Reports on Sunday acknowledged that Brown ran off the field after Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians told him to leave, which was due to the fact the receiver did not want to re-enter the game. Brown’s camp then shared how Brown was not fully healthy. At the time, it wasn’t overly believable given the fact Brown ran off the field and essentially did jumping jacks in the end zone on what his side deemed a hurt ankle.
Well, an additional report Tuesday from the Tampa Bay Times expressed how Brown probably shouldn’t have been playing due to the ankle, further providing that storyline validation. If that does happen to be true, and Brown’s camp was corroborated in the injury reasoning, it does make the receiver’s frustrations more justifiable. And while his third-quarter exit and ensuing antics shouldn’t be glossed over, another NFL team could use the injury reasoning as a way to overlook it — at least more so than they could have done if Brown’s departure was a self-initiated tantrum.
Brown, as noted, hasn’t yet been released by the Buccaneers, but all signs point to him never playing another down for the defending Super Bowl champions.
