The NFL pregame news cycle is absolutely the worst. Seriously, all this news breaks all week and it is sat on until Sunday? In short, be careful what you read, where you read it from and how you interpret it. With that disclaimer now out of the way, I must now pass along to you a Sunday morning report about Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown from the very untrustworthy Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports.
According to La Canfora, Brown recently reiterated his trade demands to the Steelers via his agent Drew Rosenhaus. Additional, Brown reportedly has still refused to return calls from team president Art Rooney II and several others in the organization and has been telling a few teammates for weeks that he does not intend to ever play for Pittsburgh again. La Canfora’s Sunday report also states that the Steelers still have no intention of granting Brown permission to pursue a trade on his own and that’s obviously not very surprising.
While La Canfora’s report is quite lengthy word-wise, it really doesn’t have much meat in it outside of him wanting us to believe that Brown has recently reiterated a trade demand via his agent. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if La Canfora made that part up.
Brown appeared in Atlanta, GA this week ahead of Super Bowl LIII and in the few short interviews that he gave, he indicated that all options are currently on the the table when it comes to his future and that all he wants to do is win and that it doesn’t matter where he attempts to do that moving forward.
The Steelers still probably haven’t decided what they want to do with Brown just yet. The start of the new league year his just roughly six weeks away and a few days after that date arrives is when Brown is due a $2.5 million roster bonus. In short, and as I have stated numerous times since the 2018 regular season ended, if the Steelers do decide they want to trade Brown, doing so before needing to pay him his roster bonus would be the ideal time.
The Steelers can attempt to find another team willing to trade Brown at any time but if they do strike a deal, it would not become official until the start of the new league year in March.
