It’s safe to say that Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown was not happy about something or other during Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs. It may have just been about the team losing, and about his inability to contribute and play a bigger role. If that were the case, then there is a reasonable argument, if you look at some of the targets that he saw from quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
Brown was targeted 17 times in the game and only caught nine of those targets, or just over half of them. None of the eight targets that he failed to come up with were drops—the majority of them were not even close to being catchable.
Take this early first quarter pass from Roethlisberger. The Steelers were facing a third and 13. The quarterback bobbled the snap, but picked it up and was able to reset and throw. Only the ball sailed on him as he looked for Brown down the right sideline, landing well out of play. he said that he knew his ball was drifting to the right before the game.
Later in the quarter, he had a similar result looking the other way. This time Roethlisberger was forced to step up on the pocket, and did not exactly deliver a textbook throw, but once again, the pass was too far and out of bounds.
There was a sequence of two plays just before the Steelers tied the game in the third quarter at 28 apiece in which Roethlisberger targeted Brown on two deep passes into the end zone. The wide receiver beat his man on both occasions, but the ball did not arrive where he could catch it.
The first one came at the 26 on second and one. As you can see from the all-22 angle, the receiver was able to beat the coverage, getting in between two defenders and behind them, but the quarterback couldn’t get the ball down to him.
A couple of plays later, Brown was able to get behind the defense a second time, but on this occasion, it seems that Roethlisberger was expecting him to break toward the left.
Especially when it came to the deep ball, Brown was not given quality chances to contribute on Sunday. If that was part of his frustrations, then the tape shows at least that there was a reason for it, whether or not it makes it justified.
