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Less than two months after saying he had retired, Antonio Brown announced on Friday that he plans to resume his NFL career. The four-time All-Pro wideout said he plans to play for the Ravens, the team that formally employed his younger cousin, Marquise Brown.
“Excited to return to the NFL this year,” Brown wrote on Twitter while posting a photo of himself in a Ravens uniform.
Of course, Brown is not currently on the Ravens roster and his tweet raises questions, especially whether he or the team believe this could really be possible.
This isn’t Brown’s first time linking up with the Ravens. Lamar Jackson, who signed a five-year deal with Baltimore on Thursday that made him the league’s highest-paid player, lobbied the Ravens to sign Brown after the two worked together during the 2020 off-season. Super Bowl with the Buccaneers.
“He’s a cool, down-to-earth guy and he’s passionate about the sport of football,” Jackson said of Brown via The Baltimore Sun at the time. “I feel like the locker room here is different from any other locker room. It’s like there’s a brotherhood going on. It’s not outside noise; it’s strictly inside. We’re worried about each other; we’re worried about what is going on. We want to win, and I can just tell him he wants to win. He wants to play ball.”
Ravens coach John Harbaugh didn’t necessarily rule out signing Brown at the time, but would he and the Ravens consider him now? Brown will turn 35 before the start of the 2023 season. He has not played in the NFL since running off the field as a member of the Buccaneers during a late season game in the 2021 season. Tampa promptly released him after that game, and no team has considered signing Brown since then.
Brown’s ugly separation from Tampa is probably one of the reasons teams have stayed away from him. He’s had numerous off-field troubles, including a recent arrest warrant for unpaid child support. Brown was released from New England after just one game in 2019 after the NFL began investigating him on multiple allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct, including rape. In October 2022, Brown was ordered to pay a delivery driver $1.2 million after he was allegedly assaulted by Brown.
Brown’s troubles – both on and off the field – in recent years often overshadow how good he was as a player in his prime. From 2011-18, Brown was selected to seven Pro Bowls and was an All-Pro every year from 2014-17. During that span, Brown, then a receiver for the Steelers, led the NFL in receptions and receiving yards on multiple occasions.
A former sixth-round pick, Brown was in contention for league MVP in 2017 before suffering an injury in Week 15. Despite the injury (which sidelined him for the final 2.5 games of the season), Brown still led the NFL with 1,533 receiving yards that season. Despite being nowhere near 100%, Brown returned for playoffs and caught seven passes for 132 yards and two scores in Pittsburgh’s divisional round loss to Jacksonville.
Brown’s last Pro Bowl season was in 2018 when he led the NFL with 15 touchdown receptions despite being benched for the final game of the season. He is second in Steelers history in career catches, yards and receiving touchdowns.
“What I will say about AB is this, we’ve had nine great years,” said Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said on “The Pivot” podcast last summer. “I appreciate that guy in ways I can’t explain to you. … I don’t think enough is said about that guy’s will, about that guy’s work ethic, about the fearlessness in which he played the game… .I’ve never seen him blink his eyes on the soccer field.I’ve never seen him flinch something that was uncomfortable on the soccer field.I’ve only seen him run into burning buildings, as they say, on the soccer field.We talk about all those other things, but we don’t talk about that.
“Incredible will. Incredible work ethic. Incredible belief in himself. That’s what I think of when I think of the nine years I spent with that guy.”
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