Brown’s departure was turning point of season
The Raiders became a playoff contender the day they released Antonio Brown.
It’s not a topic players or coaches are interested in talking about on the record nine games into the season, not when they’re 5- 4 and surprising everyone but themselves.
Some of the league’s smartest minds have made accommodations for the peculiarities of star players. Bill Walsh and Charles Haley. Bill Belichick and Randy Moss. Al Davis and … too many to count.
Coach Jon Gruden and general manager Mike Mayock thought they had a winner in Brown, despite his penchant for self-inflicted crisis and self-promotion.
But the Raiders wouldn’t be a half-game back of the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC West entering Week 11 had Brown not been jettisoned. The Raiders lost third- and fifth-round draft picks, but as Gruden once told me after his first year coaching the Raiders in 1998, “don’t spend a lot of time trying to save a bad idea.”
Where Brown was concerned, Gruden carried that philosophy to the extreme. He might have exceeded it, bending over backwards to make Brown feel welcome. Gruden cajoled, complimented and supported Brown through the receiver’s frostbitten feet, social media forays and a bizarre stance on his helmet.
By the time Brown got into it with Mayock during practice, then attacked the Raiders on Instagram, his exit seemed overdue. The Raiders waited so long there was conjecture the locker room would always look askance at Gruden for the way he coddled a star player who wasn’t on board. It was labeled an open invitation for others to do the same.
Turns out the timing was perfect. Players immediately understood the obvious. Just because the rules were temporarily relaxed for Antonio Brown didn’t change their own situation.
Brown is so talented he’ll probably get another chance. Yet there’s no doubt the Raiders did the right thing for a young, rookie-laden roster when they admitted to the mistake of trading for Brown and in the process kept his “me first” example from poisoning the locker room.
After the Raiders beat the Detroit Lions, here is how rookie slot receiver Hunter Renfrow summed up his philosophy of being a team member in good standing:
“For me, it’s never about how many catches or touchdowns. At the end of the day it’s do I feel like I’ve done enough to be a good teammate and go win games for our team?”
Does that sound like anything resembling Antonio Brown? Of course not, and Renfrow’s fellow rookies have said similar things.
Mayock hasn’t been available to local media since the Raiders released Brown, but he did speak with former NFL Network colleague Rich Eisen on his show last week and explained why rookie running back Josh Jacobs didn’t have a major role in “Hard Knocks,” the HBO reality series.
Jacobs approached Mayock regarding requests for his time and asked his boss, “Do I have to?” Mayock told him no, and that he’d run interference.
“He said, ‘I just want to focus on football. I don’t want any other distractions,’ ” Mayock said. “In hindsight, how does that look about the maturity of this 21-year- old man?”
By contrast, Brown and his personal PR staff did their best to make “Hard Knocks” their own miniseries, and succeeded to a nauseating degree.
Tight end Darren Waller, meanwhile, was eager to do “Hard Knocks” to talk openly of his substance and alcohol abuse in the past with the idea of aiding others.
“He said, ‘Mike, I want to tell my story and I want to help people and I can now with my platform,'” Mayock said.
Eisen attempted to ask Mayock about Brown, but the general manager declined.
“Rich, he’s not my concern any more,” Mayock said.
The last thing team- oriented talents such as Renfrow, Jacobs and Waller and others needed was a daily dose of the Antonio Brown Show. Without Brown, they follow the examples of a single-minded head coach in Gruden and veteran talent such as quarterback Derek Carr, center Rodney Hudson, linebacker Tahir Whitehead, and, yes, even guard Richie Incognito.
All are serious professionals within the team structure. Brown? He visited the homes of Carr and Gruden before camp and charmed their families. Then set off on his own destructive path before playing a single game with supposedly beyond reproach New England. The Patriots couldn’t take it either.
Carr has had no comment about Brown since his release. But it wasn’t difficult to listen to Carr talk about his teammates Wednesday and understand how much better off the Raiders are without him.
“We do not care about fantasy numbers, we do not care about stats, we don’t care about anything but winning,” Carr said. “That’s especially rare nowadays when everything is on social media. If you don’t get enough fantasy points, people are tweeting you … I promise you no one on our team cares about that stuff even a little bit.”
There’s a wide spectrum between being selfish, mysogynistic or something more serious, and there’s no way to know where Brown belongs on the scale. Here’s hoping he gets it straightened out.
When the Raiders traded for Brown, I thought it was a great idea. Surely he’d want to prove himself after a bitter breakup in Pittsburgh. They’d get at least a year of 100-plus catches, 1,200plus yards and doubledigit touchdowns.
Brown was indeed a turning point for the Raiders. Getting rid of him set the stage for what you’re seeing now.