Steelers Now
Aside from winning a Super Bowl, a lot of things went sideways for Antonio Brown after his Pittsburgh Steelers departure. The four-time first-team Associated Press All-Pro had just finished off the best six-season stretch of any receiver in NFL history when he requested a trade, which eventually landed him in Oakland.
LeSean McCoy, the 2013 league rushing champion and a two-time All-Pro first-teamer, believes the end of Brown’s tenure in the Steel City has been misconstrued.
“This (is) what people don’t know, because I had Drew Rosenhaus as my agent, and he had Drew as his agent,” McCoy said Wednesday on “Speakeasy.” “We’ve always been tight. He didn’t wanna leave Pittsburgh — that’s the real truth. The real truth is he loved Pittsburgh, he never wanted to leave Pittsburgh. And he felt like they didn’t truly value him. They gave (team) to JuJu (Smith-Schuster in 2018), which sounds crazy when Antonio Brown’s on your team.
“And then your Hall of Fame-caliber quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, who they basically babied for years — even when he declined — and AB, say what you want about him, he always was productive, he always was a hard worker. So all these things are going downhill for him, and now they ask him to leave? He was mad about that.”
Brown registered 686 receptions and 9,145 receiving yards from 2013-18, both figures being the most ever over a half-dozen go-rounds. The Atlanta Falcons’ Julio Jones reset the yardage record in 2019.
Meanwhile, Brown finished his career with stints with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He regularly goes live on TikTok these days.
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Ex-All Pro RB Reveals Truth Behind Antonio Brown Steelers Exit
