Details continue to trickle out about the eyebrow-raising move Antonio Brown pulled during Sunday’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers-New York Jets game.
But the reported impetus for his departure from the Bucs’ victory seems highly, highly unlikely.
Brown shed his pads in the third quarter of the game and ran shirtless off the field to the locker room, despite apparent protests from Mike Evans and O.J. Howard. Along the way, Brown ran through the end zone and did jumping jacks.
It was a bizarre scene, one that got him cut immediately after the game while Tom Brady implored people to show compassion for the embattled man he routinely has defended.
As for why Brown left, so far, there have been two reports:
— FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer on Sunday talked to Bucs head coach Bruce Arians, who said he tried to get Brown to go into the game but that the wide receiver refused. Arians said he tried again, and Brown refused again, prompting the coach to tell him to get out.
— NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport reported something similar to Glazer, albeit with some more clarity. Indeed, Brown refused to go in when Arians told him to, so Arians told him to get out. But according to Rapoport, Brown’s refusal was because the star wideout said he wasn’t healthy. Brown had been nursing an ankle injury recently.
So, there you go, right? Well, maybe not.
Common sense tells you that if you were insisting you weren’t healthy because of, presumably, an ankle injury, the last thing you would do is run around and do jumping jacks.
Jumping jacks!
Watch the full video here and come to your own conclusion, but in no way does that look like a man dealing with an ankle injury.
Brown has a history of suspect decision-making, so you can’t rule out the possibility that maybe he was hurt but decided to throw caution to the wind, run around and do jumping jacks. It’s also plausible that Brown decided he was done with the Bucs, chose not to go back into the game for whatever reason, then decided to pull a George Costanza on the way out to seal his fate.
But to chalk it up as a dispute about going in over health seems exceedingly unlikely given the way the events ultimately unfolded.
The reality is that we might not ever know beyond what currently has been reported. Glazer and Rapoport can only go off of what they’re getting from their sources — and while parts of the story might be true, the reasoning we’ve been given for the ordeal so far seems largely farfetched.
