One of the lingering mysteries regarding the Antonio Brown situation is whether he refused to re-enter Sunday’s game against the Jets due to a lingering ankle injury. Via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, Brown indeed has a lingering ankle injury.
Stroud reports that Brown visited with a “top surgeon” outside the team, and that the evaluation (including an MRI) confirmed that he has “serious pain.” The belief, per Stroud, is that Brown “probably should’ve never been on the field to begin with on Sunday.”
Stroud notes that an “official statement” from Brown’s representation “will be issued soon.” His current agent, Ed Wasielewski, has not responded to repeated inquiries from PFT regarding the situation.
Finally, to those who believe that Brown’s ability to jog to the locker room and leap around in the end zone on his way out means that he was healthy, please. There’s a huge difference between jogging around and making the full-speed cuts and changes of direction required when playing receiver at the highest level of the sport.
It’s undeniable that Brown didn’t practice on Thursday and Friday due to the ankle injury, and that he was listed as questionable for Sunday’s game. Even if coach Bruce Arians contends that Brown never cited the injury when refusing to re-enter the game, he and everyone else were on notice that Brown had a bad ankle. Thus, when Brown resisted entering the game after the first directive from Arians to do so, perhaps Arians should have asked about the ankle.