When the Buccaneers won Super Bowl LV a few weeks back, all their touchdowns came from players acquired at least in part because Tampa Bay had Tom Brady: Rob Gronkowski, Leonard Fournette, and Antonio Brown.
Brown joined the Bucs in October and was a significant contributor to the eventual champs, catching 45 passes for 483 yards with four touchdowns during the regular season. While he missed the NFC Championship Game with a knee injury, he did make eight receptions for 82 yards and two TDs in the postseason — including his one-yard score while running the wrong route in the big game.
Buccaneers defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh was on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast this week, and credited Brown for the way he handled himself in Tampa Bay. Suh noted he’d known Brown for a while as they were connected through Nike.
“Good dude, always had a great relationship with him. So for me, it was easy,” Suh said. “Obviously, ‘BA’ [Bruce Arians] was very public with what his expectations were for AB, and he followed through. So I give him all the credit for doing that. And I think that’s really all he needed, was to understand what was expected of him. And that’s really what 90 percent of people in the world [want] — give me the expectations of what you need from me and then let me go and be an adult. And that’s really what he did.”
Some people might disagree on whether it was really not having set expectations and then being treated like an adult that kept Brown in the news throughout 2019. But whatever the reasons, Brown got through the 2020 season with the Bucs and now he’s a Super Bowl champion.