Rooney II’s response to Brown critical
Iheard a theory the other day that the Antonio Brown mess never would have happened if Dan Rooney still were alive and in charge of the Steelers. I’m buying it.
Rooney was incredibly respected around the NFL and especially at team headquarters where he had a presence every day and routinely waited his turn in the lunch line with the players. I remember the time he asked Ike Taylor to get the players to stop using the N-word in the locker room and stop playing music with it in the lyrics. Taylor complied immediately. Rooney’s son, Art II, doesn’t command that sort of respect. I’m not sure anyone does.
What I do know is a lot of people — players and fans — are watching to see how Rooney II deals with the Brown fallout. Reports have the two meeting this week, although it won’t come as a surprise if Brown calls it off or fails to show. He has treated Rooney and the organization like trash every step of the way since he skipped out on the team before its last regular-season game against Cincinnati.
He has refused to take calls from Rooney and Mike Tomlin, which might be the ultimate show of disrespect. Just this past weekend, he blasted Ben Roethlisberger and Tomlin on Twitter. He has done everything imaginable to be traded or released. If I’m Rooney, I’m going to oblige him with a trade. I don’t care if that sets a bad precedent by allowing a player to force his way out of the organization with his abhorrent, onerous behavior. I don’t care
if only a late-round draft choice is the return. The sooner Brown is gone, the better for everybody. The better for the team. It’s the only chance for Rooney and Tomlin to regain control of their fractured locker room.
I hope Rooney didn’t beg for the meeting with Brown, but I do think it’s important they have it. Rooney must do his best to find out what happened with Brown, how his relationship with the team turned so toxic. Rooney needs to understand why Brown’s relationship with Roethlisberger soured even as they were putting together, arguably, the best quarterback-receiver tandem in NFL history. Rooney needs to learn why Brown turned on Tomlin, whose big mistake was continuing to treat Brown like a man even as Brown took constant advantage of him by acting like an immature fool.
It’s better for Rooney to get answers and learn from them so this situation doesn’t happen again.
Rooney already should have learned plenty from the Brown fiasco. Like Tomlin, he enabled Brown, allowing him to become bigger than the team. It started after the 2016 season — a few weeks after Brown embarrassed Tomlin and violated the sanctity of the locker room with his Facebook Live post after a playoff win in Kansas City — when Rooney gave Brown a four-year, $68 million deal, making him the NFL’s toppaid receiver.
“Antonio is a good guy, a good person,” he said at the time, calling Brown’s issues “little annoyances with the emphasis on little.” Clearly, Rooney didn’t realize he and Tomlin were creating a monster — one who, among many other things, showed up late for meetings, embarrassed the organization by threatening a national media member with violence, blew off work the Monday after the Kansas City game Sept. 16, put innocent lives in danger by driving 100 miles per hour on McKnight Road and quit on the team before the Cincinnati game Dec. 30.
Rooney and Tomlin couldn’t even get their response to that insubordinate behavior right. They benched Brown for the Cincinnati game instead of suspending him. That meant Brown ended up with his paycheck. Don’t think the other players didn’t notice.
No one is suggesting Brown’s “annoyances” are little now, not after he has turned their proud franchise into a punchline around the NFL. I would love to know what Dan Rooney would think about that.