How Antonio Brown Sabotaged His Own NFL Career

the action throughout the 2019 NFL season thus far has been interesting to say the least lot's of crazy finishes and great matchups that have left me pretty fulfilled and having sunk every single one of my Sundays into flipping through NFL game after NFL game but if we're talking about real fireworks I'm not sure anything that has or will occur in the 2019 season will be able to hold a candle to the absolute reshuffling of the NFL that was the 2019 offseason Odell and a bunch of other additions to the Browns turning them into paper Super Bowl champs a top ten pick rookie quarterback being traded so that his team could draft yet another top 10 rookie quarterback and the sudden retirement of one of the biggest talents in football but even with all of that insanity there was still one story or I guess I should say stories that absolutely consumed the entirety of the offseason and that was the saga that kept on coming with Antonio Brown hell it even extended into the regular season before it ended up tail spinning into a Michael Bay level explosion it was the grandest level of self-sabotage possible spanning three teams and tanking his 2019 salary from thirty million dollars guaranteed all the way down to just over a hundred and fifty eight thousand now that's a moderate drop of ninety nine point four seven in a matter of months wherein we rapidly escalated from frostbitten feet to some pretty serious accusations that are now under investigation so what on earth happened and what's next for both the career and legacy of one of the NFL's most controversial stars of all time well there's a lot to unpack so if we're gonna understand all of the bizarre things that have occurred here in the recent past we're gonna need to do a little bit of time traveling back to before everything came apart just for a little bit of context those of you out there who have been on this channel for a long time might remember this video right here it was the second thing that I ever uploaded on this channel back when I hadn't even hit a hundred subscribers and just like all early videos there's certainly a million things wrong with it looking back at it now however as dramatic as it was in covering Antonio Browns fallout leading up to his trade from the Pittsburgh Steelers a became straight through all of that and upstaged the life out of the topics discussed in that video to the point that most people have already forgotten about them by now I mean despite the fact that those events occurred less than a year ago a be bailing on team practices and being benched for the final game with the regular season feels like ancient history at this point and it might as well be with how many headlines a bee is occupied since last December just to get an idea of the absolute media circus that Brown was ringleader of let's set up a sort of rapid-fire timeline to catch everybody up to speed now there's a ton involved here so you're gonna have to bear with me if we travel all the way back to March this is when Antonio Brown was traded to the Oakland Raiders where he then signed a contract even more massive than his previous one totaling 50 million dollars over three years with 30 million guaranteed cut to training camp Antonio Brown shows up floating down in a hot-air balloon which will become painfully ironic however a bee isn't able to participate upon his arrival due to frostbitten feet for misuse of cryotherapy once he is cleared to return from the non football injury list a new challenger arises in the form of his preferred helmet model being banned due to new NFL safety regulations this would somehow develop into one of the bigger stories of the offseason as Brown would threaten to retire and appeal the NFL's decision multiple times before somehow failing forward into a lucrative deal with Zenith to wear their helmet in the upcoming season all throughout the preseason while this debacle was unfolding Brown consistently took off from training camp resulting in multiple unexcused absences from team activity since actions actually do have consequences Brown would later receive a letter from general manager mike Mayock stating that he had been fined a total of forty three thousand nine hundred fifty dollars which Brown then posted to instagram for his millions of followers to be angry at alongside him now I know that we're already flying through a lot but stick with me because things are about to go from zero to a hundred if you can even call all of this so far zero later that very day Brown got into a heated with his a fer mention GM mike Mayock over this Instagram post we're in that argument he reportedly threatened to punch him before punting a football and telling him to find him for that as well then after that followed a mess that included the team suspending him and then unsuspended him after an apology was issued putting everyone back on good terms and then out of nowhere that same day as the apology a B drops a bombshell of a video that includes a taped interview with his head coach Jon Gruden I mean even talking about this stuff still when we're only just over a month removed it still seems completely surreal to talk about the next day the Raiders find Brown an additional 215 grand and void the 30 million dollars guaranteed to him in his contract later resulting in the release of Antonio Brown that very same day and yes if you were wondering Antonio Brown both recorded and uploaded his reaction to that news but before that very busy day was over he was also signed by the New England Patriots in a move that surprised pretty much nobody and confirmed that the Pats at that point were indeed already Superbowl favorites things did take a turn though three days later when Brown had sexual assault allegations levied against him by a former trainer for three separate incidents in 2017 and 2018 Brown still played in week two for New England posting 54 yards and a touchdown in what would be his first and last start for the organization the reason that would be his last game was because not only did another individual come forward with more allegations but Antonio Brown sent threatening text messages to this individual that included pictures of her kids and vague notions of threats against them this obviously gets Antonio Brown released by the Patriots and now we have finally arrived to this current point where Antonio Brown hopes to both return to the NFL and win grievances filed against both the Raiders and Patriots for having voided 40 million dollars of guaranteed money due to his conduct now at this point let's all pause and take a moment to realize just how insane and unprecedented this level of off-field controversy has been for really any NFL player ever and all of that that took me literal minute Stu explained took place over the course of less than six months now we've obviously seen divas in football before the wide receiver position has always been a breeding ground for them but this sense of grandeur and need for everything to be out in the public eye with no sense of accountability whatsoever for his actions it's really astonishing so with all of that mess out on the table the question that really sticks out to me is why he'd overcome an insanely rough childhood and worked his ass off his entire life to make it to the absolute top of his career and he succeeded bringing home all of the money status and security that one can really hope to achieve in a lifetime just to throw it all away and then proceeded to go and whip out the victim card while trying to answer that question is opening up a huge can of worms to say the least and there's a couple of different angles to approach it from I'd like to look at two separate sides Antonio Brown's rapidly inflating ego and sense of self image over these past two years and the possibility that his outlandish behavior stems from a more major concussion sustained back in January of 2016 starting with the former of those two Antonio Browns ascent from team player on the Steelers to blond mustache sporting attention magnet was certainly a bizarre one he went relatively without any incidents as by far one of the hardest-working receivers in the entire NFL from 2010 all the way through 2017 and quickly assembled an incredible resume with four first-team all pros being named a two-time league leader in both receptions and yardage that list continues a long ways to showcase just how dominant Antonio Brown has been in his career as a receiver but football is still a business at the end of the day and no matter who you are money has the capacity to embolden some into acting out of a place that doesn't see the light of day in most people and in the case of Antonio Brown the massive five years 68 million dollar contract he inked with the Steelers in February of 2017 marked what I believe to be a clear shift in how Antonio Brown viewed playing in the NFL now don't get me wrong here I'm not one of those people who believes that players should put the team over their own families and lives listen footballs as dangerous as it gets go and get that money but for Antonio Brown only going based off of the actions we've seen and not as someone who can speak for his experience it certainly seems as though his name and public figure eventually became bigger than football and anything that threatened that personal brand after that was met with some serious blowback he had already deservingly reached the top of the game as the best and one of the highest-paid receivers in the league but it's at that point where I believe his sense of importance in how much Pittsburgh's success depended on him began to take center stage 2017 was still one of the best years in Brown's career business was booming as usual but as the statistics and accolades continued to reign down a B seemed to turn his focus towards self-interest at that point now Brown had always been down to further promote himself building his name up through Dancing with the Stars creating content for Facebook that resulted in the infamous Facebook live incident etc etc but now it seemed like the highs of his success were ultimately placing him above the Steelers organization the NFL and even the law in his own eyes with a few different issues including a time in April of 2018 when for whatever reason a B threw furniture off of a 14th story balcony nearly injuring a young boy down below coupling incidents like that with things like the continued absence from team meetings mounting internal feuds with his head coach his quarterback the media everyone and all of a sudden you've got a whole breadcrumb trail of actions that are more compatible with a soap opera star than an NFL wide receiver now there's obviously other parties that aren't innocent in all of this by many accounts the Steelers were already facing a bevy of locker room issues that were completely independent of Brown but the point is a be really underwent a pretty serious change in his behavior from the peak of his career around 2017 to the absolute train wreck that ended with him demanding a trade after bailing on the team in his last week of the 2018 regular season that was right around the time I made my first video on a bee and since that time the incidents I described in the timeline before have only continued to strengthen that notion that Antonio Brown regards himself outside the jurisdiction of anyone in the NFL will continue to await what will likely be a lengthy investigation into the accusations made against Brown and even if those are proven to be false at the absolute least it's massively disappointing to have seen the best wide receiver in football be reduced to a Twitter meme in a span of weeks so given that this is the fastest flame out we've seen in quite a while I think it's only fair to explore the real and scary possibility that this quick turn of browns into the NFL's great super villain could really all date back to that major concussion received from Vaughn tez Burfict back in the 2016 AFC wild card game CTE is a term that's thrown out a lot in football conversation to the point that a lot of people use it as a joke but the condition is something that many former football players have been diagnosed with and it leads to major problems later in life unfortunately sometimes with seriously traumatic results for those who aren't familiar CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy it's a neurodegenerative disease that affects those who have sustained repeated major injuries to the head it's symptoms include behavioral problems mood issues and difficulties with thinking all of which would be a concern in looking back at Browns recent track record however CTE isn't able to be diagnosed until after death and both the exact amount of trauma required for it to occur and the amount of years before the condition appears are unknown these are obviously testy waters with more and more cases having linked CTE to NFL players in recent years despite the NFL's relative silence but this is only speculative considering there's no way to diagnose Brown even if he were to be tested with all of that said though it's a theory that has gained plausibility given Browns lack of any troubling incidents before the hit and the laundry list of debacles that have taken place since there's been a number of incidents with no prior provocation that Antonio Brown has just inserted himself into such as the comments he fired off at former teammate juju Smith Schuester turning him overnight from Viva into legitimately bad person in the eyes of many who saw it take place all of the spontaneous ridiculous or excessive situations that Brown has taken part in over this past year are at the very least cause for concern for his own health which is obviously more important than football team but at this current point with what we know for sure it's certainly not ideal when you're hoping that all of these outbursts are just a result of Brown not being able to handle himself as a professional and that they aren't indicative of a greater medical issue so with this supernova of an ordeal just now starting to cool off a bit what's next for the excommunicated superstar there's really no telling with how desperate teams can get for elite talent but if I were to guess nobody out there is touching Antonio Brown until all of the allegations against him are settled or cleared but personally I've got little doubt that Brown will return to play in the NFL eventually even though I don't have a speck of a clue as to which organization that'll be four but Brown has already gone public in saying that he wants to return to the NFL as soon as possible but even if or when he returns what's the ultimate effect this whole saga has on his career and legacy in the NFL Brown was and still is one of the most talented wide receivers in NFL history and he was set on a course to end his career in Canton easily with the current pace he was at when he was with the Steelers cut to less than 12 months later though and now all of that is in jeopardy between three teams one regular-season game and countless incidents and altercations within that span all in all it's a fall from grace that's rivaled by few others in NFL history and whether it's to be attributed to ego greed CTE or anything else is merely for us to really speculate about all that's fact is that it's happened just like the story of Icarus Brown took his antics way too close to the Sun and it burned his career all the way back down to the ground floor leaving him to file for grievances for the money that he was once guaranteed and even if a be returns to greatness in the NFL and is able to leave this entire past year on the Shelf its shadow is still going to cast itself over his entire career in the end whether it ends up being all a big joke a much sadder story or something we don't even have a firm grasp on yet but if there's only one thing that football history takes away from the Antonio Brown saga even if it goes no further than today it's that no matter how talented you are or what you perceive yourself to be even the absolute biggest superstars can all come crashing down in an instant you

Channel: Set the Edge

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Keywords: antonio brown, antonio brown phone call, antonio brown saga, antonio brown cte, antonio brown released, antonio brown patriots, antonio brown raiders, antonio brown steelers, antonio brown highlights, set the edge antonio brown, set the edge, antonio brown drama, how antonio brown sabotaged his own nfl career, antonio brown cte hit, antonio brown cte theory, what happened to antonio brown, antonio brown clown, antonio brown cut, antonio brown jon gruden, antonio brown fight

Id: bhq67U9GALA

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 18 2019