Buccaneers (still) receiver Antonio Brown stayed silent (for the most part) until last night. Now, he’s saying plenty about the disintegration of his relationship with the team.
Among the disintegrated relationships? The one that brought him to Tampa in the first place, the connection to quarterback Tom Brady.
A Thursday morning social-media barrage from AB included the sharing of text messages with Alex Guerrero, Tom Brady’s friend, partner, and trainer. It began with Brown requesting on the morning of Christmas Eve half of a $100,000 fee that Brown previously paid to Guerrero, “if we not going to work any more.” Guerrero responded politely and almost cheerfully, offering to “send the balance.”
Brown added this observation on Twitter: “Imagine your QB trainer charges you 100k then doing no work must be was a part of these guys plans all along.”
In other words, Brown is suggesting that Brady and Guerrero wanted to recruit Brown to the Buccaneers because they viewed him as someone who could be targeted for excessive fees charged by the TB12 operation.
It doesn’t matter when Brown is factually correct, and it undoubtedly is not. What matters is that he’s airing out this dirty laundry publicly, and loudly. With Brady due to meet with reporters later today, there’s a chance he’ll be uttering carefully-crafted buzzwords other than “empathy” and “compassion” when talking about Brown.
Brown used social media in 2019 to get what he wanted from the Raiders -- his release. He seems to be doing the same thing now. We’ll see whether it ends the bizarre logjam, which has seen coach Bruce Arians say on Sunday that Brown is no longer a member of the team and, four days later, Brown still being a member of the team.