The 'AB Won' Train Needs To Slow Down

COLIN DUNLAP
https://937thefan.radio.com/articles/dunlap-antonio-brown-won-train-needs-slow-down
March 11, 2019

PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) - The Steelers didn’t lose. 

Got that? OK, good. 

The Steelers didn’t get “fleeced” or “bamboozled” or any of those other words.

Got that? OK, good. 

In this whole transformation from Ronald Ocean to Mr. Big Chest (I think I have that right), the Pittsburgh Steelers --- most notably Art Rooney II, Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin --- aren’t the people who could have done a whole lot different.

At least in my estimation that’s the way things are at this point. That’s the way things always will be in my eyes. 

But it seems that too many who consume the Pittsburgh Steelers want to hook into the national narrative slung forward by the talking heads on your television that Antonio Brown played the organization like a fiddle and got exactly what he wanted. 

Again, I disagree. 

What the curious case of Mr. Brown Goes To Oakland truly is, is a man in his 30s who can’t self-regulate, doesn’t know how to act within the confines of how he should and he leaves his employer with no other choice than a mutual parting of the ways. 

He’s a quitter and has turned into a nuisance. 

This isn’t a guy who played any system or exposed the Pittsburgh Steelers. This is a man who became a liability to keep around by the way he acted (no matter how talented) and needed to be shuttled off somewhere else no matter how minimal the return was. 

Particularly comical to me is the talk of how Antonio Brown’s actions might set precedent for other players to do the same --- either to the Steelers or another organization in the NFL. 

I’ll tell you what, wake me up the next time a player threatens a reporter, drives 100 mph on a suburban street, (allegedly) throws furniture off the balcony of a building and is jammed up in a domestic issue over a haircut all as a mechanism to get what they want and hasten a move out the door of a franchise they don’t want to be playing for. 

I’m here to tell you that isn’t going to happen again. This was an independent situation.  

  

I’m here to tell you Antonio Brown isn’t some trendsetter as too many in the national media are trying to make him out to be; instead he’s a rogue employee who simply couldn’t be kept around any longer because his behavior started to tip past the line of harmless and well into territory deemed dangerous. 

Long gone are the days when Antonio Brown simply drew flags here and there for dancing in the end zone when it wasn’t allowed --- at this point this is a man who seemingly has gone full-blown nutso. 

So the question isn’t did the Steelers get enough in return from the Oakland Raiders. 

The question isn’t about how Colbert and Rooney and Tomlin and the bunch failed or whatever. 

The question isn’t about how Antonio Brown and a couple of guys named Rosenhaus “fleeced” the Steelers and ultimately landed their client in a place where he wanted to be. 

The question is this: How in the world were Rooney and Colbert and Tomlin supposed to do anything differently when they were dealing with a man in his 30s who simply wouldn’t behave? I’m here to tell you they couldn’t. No one got fleeced --- instead the Steelers got rid of someone who was only going to be a detriment moving forward. 

The Steelers got rid of a guy who was once a hero and turned himself into a bum in this town. ​