How bad does it have to get before Drew Rosenhaus decides that he can’t work with you anymore? Antonio Brown got the opportunity to find that out over the course of the past week, as the NFL’s premiere super agent dumped the former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver as his client just a year after pulling off what seemed at the time like a coup for a man with a blonde-dyed mustache.
Just days after Brown himself live-streamed and further posted incidents from his own confrontation with police officers, which included quite a bit of profanity and shouting on his part, and reached a crescendo with a literal bag of candy dicks, Rosenhaus filed with the NFLPA to say that he would no longer—for now, be working with him as a client.
Rosenhaus did say that he would like to work with Brown again—because of course he would, imagine the contract he would get if a team is ever willing to give him a chance again—but only under the condition that he seeks help for whatever the hell is wrong with him.
Just a year ago, Rosenhaus was seemingly helping Brown orchestrate a campaign in which he portrayed himself as both disgruntled, wrong, and somewhat nuts, the latter part actually proving ultimately to be true. This was in an attempt to force the Steelers to trade Brown to a team that was willing to renegotiate his contract early.
Because of the highly unusual stipulation for a player with several years remaining on his contract, not to mention his increasingly erratic behavior, Pittsburgh found trading partners difficult to come by. The Oakland Raiders ultimately stepped in with third- and fifth-round picks for Brown, giving the wide receiver both a healthy pay raise and guaranteed money.
A series of unfortunate events ultimately followed, all of which Brown brought upon himself, which led to him not only wanting to be released from his new contract with the Raiders, but getting it. The New England Patriots then signed him, and released him after one game after Bill Belichick grew tired of answering questions about him allegedly raping somebody.
The real incident that drove his second release in weeks, though was a group text exchange in which he very clearly and visibly was harassing and threatening a second individual accusing him of rape. It was only after that occurred that the Patriots released him.
That was very early on in the season, and he has received little attention since then. The New Orleans Saints brought him in for a highly public workout, which he turned into a freaking music video after bringing a camera crew to, calling it all fake.
Meanwhile, he has an ongoing anti-white woman campaign (it remains his pinned post on his Twitter account), presumably stemming from issues with one of the mothers of one (or more) of his children, which is what prompted the police-involved incident mentioned above. The police department would later rebuke Brown and gave back money that he donated.
It’s really just amazing at this point how he continually manages to find new ways to make things worse for himself. And I’m also running out of empathy. If he doesn’t need some sort of mental help, then I haven other way to make sense of his behavior and decision-making processes, however.
