Antonio Brown quitting on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was to no fault of Mike Evans.
As Evans explained to Yahoo Sports’ Matt Harmon, he effectively begged Brown to check back into the Week 17 game between the Bucs and the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium. AB, of course, did not oblige and ultimately ran off the field shirtless in what proved to be the final scene of his Tampa Bay tenure.
“What I remember is we were trying to get him to come back in the game,” Evans told Harmon, per Pro Football Talk. “He was saying he wanted the rock, and rightfully so. We should have gotten him the rock. He’s an unbelievable player. But I was like, ‘Yo, come in the game, AB.’ So we were asking him to come in the game. We were on offense. I’m like, ‘AB, big bro, come on, let’s go in the game. They’re calling for us.’ Because me and him are both on a pitch count, because we’re both coming back from injury. So I’m trying to get him to come in the game, and he doesn’t come.
“So I go back on the drive. I do my two plays. I come out. I see BA (Bruce Arians) still trying to get him to come in the game, and they had a falling out somehow. AB goes off, and he’s about to take his pads off. I’m trying to grab his pads and tell him like, ‘Yo, big bro…’ because me and him have a relationship. I don’t want him to go out like this. Like, obviously we need him, so I’m telling him, ‘Big bro, we need you. The season’s almost over. If you don’t want to be here, the next year you can leave.’ Obviously, I just didn’t want him to go out like that. So I’m telling him, ‘Please don’t go out like this.’ They’re calling me to go back in the game, so I just left him alone.”
Brown’s tantrum was the talk of the sports world for a few weeks after he lost his cool, but it now feels like a distant memory. We suppose that’s what happens when Tom Brady leaves your organization, but might not be done with football altogether.
