So, remember that big, exclusive ‘interview’ that former Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker James Harrison was supposed to conduct with wide receiver Antonio Brown? The two appeared on Harrison’s Instagram page on Wednesday—while Head Coach Mike Tomlin, was delivering his end of season press conference—to announce the upcoming exclusive.
It never happened. And while it was pretty easy to predict why, now we know for sure, at least based on reports. According to Adam Schefter, Brown was advised, surely by his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, to not do the interview, so it is he who shut that idea down. Perhaps around the same time Tomlin was telling reporters that Brown made Rosenhaus call Tomlin on Sunday morning of the team’s season finale to tell him he wants to play.
“We saw Antonio Brown about to go live with James Harrison this week, with what they advertised as a big interview. Well, Antonio Brown was advised right before he went on there not to do that and got shut down, which is why that interview never occurred”, Schefter reported on ESPN.
According to @AdamSchefter, #Steelers WR Antonio Brown was ‘advised’ to not do the interview with James Harrison……. pic.twitter.com/OO1vwPjBXp
— Def Pen Sports (@DefPenSports) January 6, 2019
It certainly would have been nice if Brown were capable of realizing of his own volition what a stupid idea it would have been to go through with that interview in the form and fashion in which it was about to take place, given everything else that has been going on surrounding him over the course of the past year culminating to his not playing on Sunday.
But it’s exactly because of that sort of thing that the Steelers find themselves in the position they are now in, being forced to give serious thought to the possibility of moving on from the best player on their team with the idea that they would be better off in the long run for it.
2018 has not been a good year for Brown off the field, accused of throwing furniture, speeding, threatening reporters, making unfounded accusations of racism, going on unusual rants about how his life isn’t fair and how the man who shows up in training camp riding a helicopter shouldn’t be a spectacle. The list goes on, unfortunately, as we didn’t even get into the football portion.
Details are still murky over what happened in the week leading up to the season finale against the Cincinnati Bengals, but what we do know, based on reports, is that many of Brown’s teammates have not been thrilled, both with how he handled himself and how the team handled his handling himself.
It is unknown if any of his current teammates have spoken to him since Sunday, but obviously he spoke to Harrison, who clearly has an axe to grind. That made for what surely would have been a combustible interview, which was fortunately (perhaps most especially for his sake) shut down.
