PITTSBURGH — Antonio Brown is a man of grand accessorizing. He’s often the last to leave the postgame locker room as he meticulously gets dressed. Like his precise route running, everything must look right, from the Gucci slippers to a diamond-studded jacket.
So when Brown left the locker room by himself Sunday, before the media was allowed to enter it, the absence was as curious as what happened on the field during the Pittsburgh Steelers‘ 42-37 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Brown’s modest production through two games (by his standards) doesn’t tell the whole story. The CBS broadcast caught Brown having at least a mild confrontation with offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner, who later in the game spent a few minutes talking to Brown on the bench. The conversation ended with Fichtner patting Brown on the head.
Multiple teammates say they didn’t see any sort of confrontation between Fichtner and Brown.
The most jarring image was Brown walking back to the sideline, head down, while the rest of the offense celebrated Ben Roethlisberger‘s 3-yard touchdown run with 1:59 left in the game in the opposite corner of the end zone. There might be more to that story, of course. Perhaps Brown was playing through some pain. But the separation of team and player in that snapshot was hard to ignore.
Brown’s actions at least gave Steelers fans something to think about beyond his 18 catches for 160 yards and one touchdown through two games.
Sunday’s offensive attack seemed tailored for Brown’s skill set. Roethlisberger ditched the running game for a no-huddle performance of 452 yards on 60 passing attempts. But despite 17 targets for Brown, he finished with nine catches for 67 yards. Yes, he was held a lot by Chiefs defenders. But a player with a knack for the end zone is still getting open.
Roethlisberger doesn’t believe the chemistry with Brown is off.
“Defenses are doing a good job of trying to take him away by doubling, putting extra people around him,” Roethlisberger said. “So other guys are stepping up.”
JuJu Smith-Schuster and Jesse James did just that with a combined 259 yards and two scores.
Brown ducking the media capped a strange week in which Brown apologized for a tweet threatening an ESPN reporter and, when asked about the apology Friday, explained why he’s an “exceptionalist” who goes “beyond the rules” and steps in “the light of divinity.”
“Any time you’re stepping in your divinity of purpose and what God got me here to do there’s always going to be naysayers, there’s always going to be doubters,” Brown said that day. “I’m not bound to where I’m from or where I come from. I am who I am. And that’s pretty much what it is.”
Brown producing on the field is as predictable as the freezing temps inside Heinz Field in December. And after five straight 100-catch seasons with Roethlisberger, the two are sure to get hot eventually. Brown hasn’t appeared to lose his quickness at age 30.
But Brown’s unpredictability Sunday might be something else for the Steelers to manage in an already trying season. The last time he ducked the media after a game was the 2017 playoff loss to New England, which happened the week after the Facebook Live incident, when he broadcast the team’s postgame locker room celebration after a playoff win over the Chiefs.
Since then, he has signed a four-year, $68 million extension, beat up a Gatorade cooler and put together a 1,533-yard season in just 14 games to warrant MVP consideration.
Maybe conflict is good.
Source : ESPN
