Antonio Brown got what he wanted, and the Raiders should have known what they were getting.
Chase Williams of WPXI, the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, has reported that Brown already has gone “radio silent” on the Raiders, as he obtains treatment away from the team on feet that were frostbitten last month in a cryotherapy chamber.
Here’s the specific content of the tweet from Williams: “10 practices into training camp and Antonio Brown has already gone ‘radio silent’ with the Raiders. They have zero clue where he is or what the progress of the foot injury is.”
It’s impossible to know whether this report is accurate, in part because no one connected to the team is publicly saying anything about Brown’s injury. It had seemed that the Raiders were mum in order to avoid making Brown look bad or foolish for freezing his feet; maybe the Raiders are saying nothing because there’s nothing to say, and because they just don’t know what’s going on.
If the report is accurate, folks in Pittsburgh will shed no tears over this development, given the manner in which Brown behaved at the end of his nine-year run with the team. Folks in Oakland will be dismayed by the situation, but they shouldn’t be.
Brown wasn’t punished but rewarded for quitting on his team in Week 17. There’s no reason to think that he learned any lesson from his final days with the Steelers because, at the end of the day, he won.