Owner wasn’t sparing in praise for Antonio Brown
If indeed Antonio Brown has played his final game for the Steelers, Art Rooney II gave him one generous sendoff.
Rooney acknowledged again that Brown may no longer be with the team because of his conduct before the final game of the season. But he mostly had good words for the record-breaking, four-time AllPro who has spent nine seasons with the Steelers.
Perhaps it is a strategy by Rooney to remind everyone just how good Brown is in order to increase his trade value, or maybe keeping relationships warm for the slightest chance he could return. Or was it Rooney just being honest?
“I am not going to sit here and disparage Antonio,” the Steelers president began when the topic
came around during his 20minute interview with reporters Wednesday. “I think that you have to remember that he has been one of the most productive receivers in the league for a long time now. He’s helped us win a lot of games over the last few years.” It is hard to imagine the Steelers won’t trade Brown and instead welcome him back for the 2019 season after all he did. But Rooney seemed to have little beef with much of anything that happened until the final week of the season. “I don’t think he was a major distraction to the team up until the last weekend of this season,” Rooney said. “The proof is in the pudding for the most part.” Indeed, the Steelers’ final press release before their final game took up five pages of Antonio Brown superlatives. Among them were the most receptions ( 686) and receiving yards ( 9,145) by anyone in NFL history over a six- year span, tied for secondfastest to accumulate 10,000 receiving yards ever, more receptions ( 837) and receiving yards ( 11,207) by far than anyone since he entered the NFL in 2010, and on and on. Through all the drama of the past season, he led the league and set the Steelers record with 15 touchdown catches. Rooney was asked what he thought of the working relationship between Mike Tomlin and Brown, if he received special treatment from the coach that might have led to the season- ending disappearance. “I think the kind of bottomline evaluation of that is this guy was a great football player in this league over multiple years,” Rooney answered. “So, as I said before, were there maybe things that we would’ve liked to have done a little differently or would have liked him to have done a little differently? The answer is probably yes, but he’s one of the hardest- working players on the team, contributed to a lot of wins, and I think someday we’ll maybe understand better kind of what happened here the last week of the season but don’t really understand it right now.” Rooney told the Post- Gazette’s Gerry Dulac last week that it was “hard to envision” Brown being on the team in 2019, even though he does not think he was a major distraction until he left the team before the final game. “The situation changed the last week in the season,” Rooney explained, “so if you sort of start talking about that period from then until now, it’s a different story. “I was referring to prior to that in terms of was he is a distraction, was he a problem. For the most part, I’d say he wasn’t a distraction to this team and the proof is in the pudding. Obviously, that changed last weekend of the season and there is no other way to say it than I am very disappointed with where we are and what happened and don’t have a lot of good explanations for it as we sit here today.” Trades can officially be made starting March 13, and if the Steelers intend to do so, they would profit more to do it before Brown’s $ 2.5 million roster bonus is due March 17. Any chance at all Brown could play for the Steelers in 2019? “We have left everything open at this point,” Rooney said. “There aren’t that many signs out there that that is going to happen, but I like I said before we haven’t made any decisions and we are going to take our time. There are no real decisions that can or need to be made until middle of March, so we will take that time to evaluate everything.”