There have been no shortage of things that have gone wrong for the Steelers this season, but wide receiver Antonio Brown had been able to stay pretty much above the fray as he racked up catches as the top receiver on the offense.
Even Brown hasn’t been able to remain totally immune from the misery that’s settled in around the team, however. Coach Mike Tomlin said, via Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tuesday that he benched Brown late in the loss to the Patriots last Sunday because they didn’t feel that Brown was providing “quality execution” of his assignments.
Whatever frustration there was with Brown on Sunday, however, it won’t wind up affecting his status for the Week 10 game against the Bills. Tomlin said that Brown will start and play his regular role.
Tomlin has said that players who are lacking effort will be benched and there’s no better way to illustrate that point than by benching a player as important to the Steelers’ chances of winning a few games this season as Brown, but the flip side of that is that Tomlin will have to extend the same treatment to every player on the team. That will make it difficult to field a defense since it was hard to find a single player who was providing quality execution of his assignments in the second half of the New England loss.