The Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Antonio Brown in the sixth round of the 2010 NFL Draft. He posted his first 1,000-yard receiving season in 2011. The Steelers signed him to a five-year extension in July 2012 and he rewarded the team’s faith in him with unprecedented production posting six consecutive 100-catch campaigns. In 2017, the team rewarded him with a four-year extension as the highest-paid receiver in the NFL that was supposed to keep him in Pittsburgh for the remainder of his career.
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Steelers award winning beat writer, Ed Bouchette.
Ed Bouchette began covering the Steelers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1985. He worked for the newspaper until 2019 when he moved to The Athletic until he retired in May of 2022. Bouchette is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee. He is a winner of the Dick McCann Award which has since been renamed the Bill Nunn Jr. Award.
Bouchette and Brown were well acquainted with each other by 2018. The writer had covered the team for the Pro Bowl receiver's entire tenure with the team. One year after signing a record deal for wide receivers, Bouchette reported that Brown was limping after a training camp practice, and it did not sit well with the mercurial wide receiver. Brown profanely responded on Twitter that he was making up the report that he was limping.
Twitter Edited by Triblive.com
Steelers Antonio Brown blasts Ed Bouchette
On Thursday, Mark Kaboly, who also writes for The Athletic and a long-time colleague of Bouchette co-hosted The PM Team w/Poni & Mueller with Andrew Fillipponi. The show discussed embarrassing sports stories and Kaboly related a story from Steelers practice shortly after the incident between Brown and Bouchette.
“Ever hear about Ed Bouchette getting run over,” Kaboly asked Fillipponi. “It was the day after him and Antonio Brown had the disagreement. The next day, a wide receiver, an undrafted guy, had a decent camp and he ended up going to New England, he was at Latrobe Stadium the next day, ran Ed right over. We had this thought that maybe AB paid him off. Ed took a shot, but he popped right up.”
Steelers Safety Ryan Clark Sounded The Alarm In 2019 About Antonio Brown
Brown’s bizarre escapades were not public in 2018. The national fireworks over his behavior would not start until he forced his way out of Pittsburgh at the end of the 2018 season. Stories of bad behavior and fights with teammates and the coaching staff were not public knowledge until Ryan Clark shared them in January 2019 on ESPN.
Steph Chambers / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Steelers' Antonio Brown quits on 2018 Steelers.
Interestingly, Kaboly and other local writers attributed the incident as possible retaliation from Brown. He was one week removed from an incident with Jesse Washington, a senior writer for ESPN’s The Undefeated. He issued a public apology for threatening the reporter on Twitter.
“I made a mistake in judgment with my tweet last week, and I apologize for that,” Brown said. “It is not OK to threaten anyone, and I need to be better spiritually and professionally. I do not agree with the negative parts of the story about my personal life, I need to have better control over my actions to use social media as a way to engage with my fans, rather than use it improperly.”
Bouchette did not get a similar apology. It is impossible to know if it was more than an accident when the veteran reporter was run over immediately after being confronted by Brown. In retrospect, it was a clear signal of increasingly erratic behavior to come from the All-Pro wide receiver. Entering the 2018 season, he was entering the sixth season of unprecedented production and what would be his last year in Pittsburgh.
Andrew Mills, NJ Advanced Media via AP
Former Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown continues to show a disturbing pattern of behavior.
Brown’s downfall has been well chronicled in the NFL and his playing career in the league is probably over. He has moved on to skirmishes with law enforcement and civil suits. Most recently, he has gotten his football team the Albany Empire kicked out of the National Arena League (NAL) by not paying his portion of league expenses in May and trying to reverse his April payment to the league. Sadly, his father Eddie Brown, who is an Arena League Hall of Fame player, has been caught up in the controversy as a front-office member.
It is unclear at this point if the move is designed to force his way into the new version of the Arena Football League that is due to begin to play in 2024 or just the latest example of Brown’s curious money management strategy. What is becoming clear is that someone needs to step in and take control of his personal affairs. The question is, who cares enough about him at this point to wade through the abuse to do it?
What do you think, Steeler Nation? Do you think Brown paid off an undrafted free agent to hit Bouchette? Please comment below, or on my Twitter @thebubbasq.
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