Arizona Cardinals General Manager Steve Keim and head coach Bruce Arians met the media Wednesday and discussed their decision to trade left tackle Levi Brown to the Pittsburgh Steelers for a conditional draft pick.
Arians, who called Brown “elite” prior to the offseason workouts got underway, said Wednesday that Brown wasn’t the same tackle he watched on tape prior to him suffering a torn triceps back in August of 2012.
“The tackle we evaluated (from) 2011 was a heck of a left tackle,” Arians said. “The tackle that got back isn’t the same guy.”
Keim, who said Wednesday that it was in the best interest of the organization to move on from Brown right now because they didn’t view him as being in the team’s future plans, also weighed in with his thoughts on the former first-round draft pick.
“Levi Brown was not living up to our expectations on the field,” Keim said.
The Cardinals obviously viewed Brown as their own experienced version of Steelers second-year left tackle Mike Adams and decided to dump him for a conditional draft pick instead of releasing him outright.
As I mentioned earlier, the Steelers only risk involved in acquiring Brown will be whatever amount of money they choose to pay him in the form of a signing bonus should they choose to restructure his 2013 base salary in order to get cap compliant. Well, that and the conditional draft pick.
Should Brown wind up not being any better than Adams, they can easily dump him after the season is over.
