It’s starting to feel as though the Antonio Brown story is winding down to a sad end, or at least a significant pause. By the time this piece publishes, it may even be the case that the former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver is in jail. Hollywood, FL police consider him a suspect of battery after allegedly assaulting a driver of a moving truck yesterday at his residence, along with his trainer, who was arrested.
By the time police arrived at the scene, Brown had vacated the premises, and officers were unable to make contact with him. It shouldn’t exactly be a surprise that he would not return their calls, considering the fact that he would not even return Mike Tomlin’s calls—or Art Rooney’s, or even his teammates’—following the tumultuous end to his relationship with the Steelers a year ago.
Things have just continued to spiral out of control since then. Setting aside all of the ridiculousness that ensued during his severing of ties with the Steelers—culminating in an absurd and slanderous ESPN interview—Brown has been a terror to those around him.
Cameron Wolfe writes for ESPN that the wide receiver’s neighbors are tired of him and his antics. The police have already been called to his home on several occasions this month alone, including just recently in an altercation that he broadcast on social media, culminating in him tossing ‘a bag of dicks’ into the street in the direction of the police and his child’s mother, with whom he had a dispute.
Following that incident, the local police with whom he had a good relationship severed ties with him, including returning monetary donations he had made. His agent, Drew Rosenhaus, also abandoned ship. Just last year, Rosenhaus orchestrated the ridiculous trade in which he got the Oakland Raiders to give him new money and guaranteed money with three years left on his then-current contract.
Since then, he forced the Raiders to release him, then was accused of rape after an extensive pre-trial period that went nowhere with his accuser, his former trainer. This forced the New England Patriots to release him as well. In the meantime, he continued to make a spectacle of himself on social media with bizarre and poorly-typed rants.
We can go back further to his throwing furniture, his speeding, and an increasingly eye-opening number of past events that, individually, were looked beyond by many. It’s clear that he has established a long pattern of irrational and poor behavior.
Yet he always managed to remain out of jail. He could be arrested shortly, pending the decision whether or not the formally place battery charges on him. The Hollywood police are expected to update the situation at noon.
