Antonio Brown sure said a lot of things during his 40-plus-minute interview with Jeff Darlington, which aired on ESPN late last week. Whether or not what he had to say was interesting probably has a strong correlation with how tired you are of hearing about him and just want him to be on a team other than the Pittsburgh Steelers already.
But we are talking about one the might high-profile players in all of the NFL, a member of the Steelers until otherwise noted, making headlines, so of course we’re going to be talking about it. This is a player who pretty much went viral for saying that he doesn’t need the game. While what he said was fundamentally true—he doesn’t need to play, and he did say he wants to play—a lot of people took it the same way they took Kevin Colbert’s ‘kids’ remark.
While he doesn’t feel he needs to play football, however, he still seemed to feel the need to offer a bit of a sales pitch for himself for any teams perhaps interested in bring him in. whether or not you can make sense of the answer is another story.
“See, when you a kid, they teach you addition. Addition is a problem searching for an answer”, he told Darlington. “When you get older they teach you algebra. Algebra is a answer searching for the problem. I am a answer. My uniqueness is the answer”.
Regardless of whether or not his math analogy is logically sound, it doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the rest of what he said, which is essentially that he is a unique talent that will bring a new dimension to whatever team he is playing for that no other team would have.
But I’m not tryna sell you here”, he told his interviewer; “you here on 8000-square feet on behalf of Mr. Big Chest”. The interview took place in his mansion, as you can see. Brown attributed his uniqueness and his drive to his upbringing.
“Since day one, I’m from Liberty City, I been bettin’ on myself”, he said. “You see where we were just at and where we at now, so it’s a big difference. And that come with having the right attitude, being able to deal with some negativity. I’m from Liberty City, bro. I had kids rankle me all day, like, ‘bro, your hair nappy, your shoes dirty’. Bro, you gotta have tough skin”.
“That’s how we was born. So it don’t matter what no one say”, he went on. “I know what I stand for. I know what I am. I know what I bring to the table. You heard my uncle say, ‘he know his worth’. I know when you see 84 out there the way I work is gonna inspire everyone around. And if you not inspired, you’re just not want to be great. You’re just a regular person. And that’s cool, too, but what I’m tryna to do is tryna to be special”.
No doubt any team that wants to bring him in would love to see him inspire the players around him to be greater. To be honest, I’m really not quite sure how well he accomplished that in Pittsburgh, though his work ethic has always been praised by many teammates and cited as motivation to push themselves harder.
