Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and the team’s former wide receiver Antonio Brown will likely be long remembered as being one of the best pass connecting duos in NFL history. After all, the two connected on 790 total passes during the nine seasons they played together with 73 of those completions resulting in touchdowns. However, after seemingly being real good friends for nearly all nine of those seasons that they played together in Pittsburgh, Roethlisberger and Brown now seem far, far from that as a result of everything that transpired since Week 17 of the 2018 regular season when the latter went AWOL from the team just prior to the last game.
During his Sunday one-on-one interview with Bob Pompeani of KDKA-TV, Roethlisberger addressed his current relationship status with Brown and confirmed that he’s tried to connect a few times with his former teammate since Week 17 of last season to no avail.
“Sent him [Brown] some messages, called him, I haven’t heard back,” Roethlisberger told Pompeani. “But I’m sure he’s getting busy with his season and getting ready as I am with the guys that we have here. But I really am looking forward to reconnecting with him, talking, because like I said, he’s a good friend of mine. I still call him a good friend and I hope that we can reconnect and I hope that our friendship can continue to grow.”
As for Brown and where he’s currently at in attempting to repair his friendship with his former quarterback, he doesn’t seem too interested in doing such. In fact, after a small portion of Pompeani’s interview with Roethlisberger surfaced earlier on Monday, Brown quickly responded on Twitter with, “Two Face,” an obvious slam at his former quarterback.
For as best as it seemed he could, Roethlisberger took the high road during his interview with Pompeani when asked a question about Brown.
“Well, I’ll start with saying, AB made me who I am,” Roethlisberger said when asked how the deemed wifi connection between him and Brown ended up going down for good this past season and offseason. “I mean, he was the greatest wide receiver I think I’ve ever played with and the things that he did in this league, and that we did together, are amongst the best of all time.
“There was some great things and then all of a sudden it just kind of disappeared. And I’m not really sure where it went. We always worked through it, we always came out the other side smiling and hugged it out and enjoyed it and moved on. And this time, I really don’t know.”
Roethlisberger also addressed during his interview with Pompeani the comments he made during one of his radio show episodes last season following the Steelers loss to the Denver Broncos that were interpreted by many as him criticizing Brown’s route running on the game-losing play that culminated with an interception.
“I can see where that comment was perceived to be negative towards AB, but it wasn’t meant that way,” Roethlisberger explained to Pompeani. “It was more, just like everything during the season, it’s a compliment to AB because he’s doubled every single play. And that’s why it’s still so amazing, is that he was able to do it through all the adversity of double and triple teams. And so it was more meant that I should have gone to JuJu [Smith-Schuster] because he was single covered.”
As earlier stated, Roethlisberger took as high of a road as he seemingly possibly could during his interview with Pompeani. How will the full interview now be received by Brown? We’ll see, but I wouldn’t expect Brown to start returning any of Roethlisberger’s phone calls or texts anytime in the near future and especially if the former remains convinced that the latter really is being two-faced.
