Steelers Now
While working as a broadcast for ESPN, Jon Gruden periodically stopped by Pittsburgh Steelers practices and was always drawn to one player — Antonio Brown.
“Every time I watched the Steelers practice in training camp, every time I saw him practice during the regular season, I was convinced that (if) they didn’t have a fence around the stadium or the practice facility, Antonio would get killed by a car,” Gruden said Wednesday on Cam Heyward’s “Not Just Football” podcast. “He finished everything, man. I have not seen a guy practice that hard since Jerry Rice, I swear to God. I had to have him.”
In 2019, during his second stint in charge of the Oakland Raiders, Gruden sent two mid-round draft picks to the Steelers to acquire Brown, who then inked a reworked contract but never saw the field in silver and black. The Raiders cut ties with him after a multitude of off-the-field distractions, including him suffering frostbite on his feet and throwing a fit over what helmet he had to wear.
“We took a shot,” Gruden said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. There were some issues, I think, off the field that he wanted to deal with. He wasn’t really as, maybe, focused, possibly, on football like he was in the podcast. But the two or three OTAs that we had him on the field, and he was running our routes, running my stuff? I went home one night, opened a bottle of Asti Spumante and drank it all. I though we were gonna complete every pass.
“Holy shit, I mean, this guy’s running my routes better than they’ve ever been run before. And it’s one of my biggest regrets, honestly, in my career that that didn’t work out.”
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Ex-Steelers Star One of Super Bowl-Winning HC’s Biggest Regrets
