Antonio Brown is doing his best to get his side of the story out after walking out on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during Week 17's game against New York Jets. Wednesday night, Brown released a lengthy statement through his attorney that called out Bruce Arians and the Buccaneers for how they handled the situation while explaining just how bad his ankle injury is, noting that he's going to need surgery.
The way Brown tells it, he told Arians that he was too injured to play but the Buccaneers coach gave him the boot, leading to the show of him walking off the field shirtless.
For insight on the Buccaneers' Week 18 matchup against the Panthers, listen below:
In Wednesday's statement, Brown claimed he had text messages with Arians from before the game in which the injury was discussed. The wideout has now released those alleged messages:
Antonio Brown has released his text messages with Bruce Arians: pic.twitter.com/OWlJiqYdEf
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) January 6, 2022
This would seem to show Arians pressuring Brown to play, as Brown claimed, though it's unclear if the coach knew the severity of the injury at the time of these texts. It was public knowledge that Brown had been dealing with an ankle issue before (he missed games) and then tweaked his ankle in practice last week and that it wasn't a certainty he was going to play against the Jets, so maybe Arians really did push the wide receiver into playing despite him not really being ready to do it. Brown is also calling out Arians for claiming they never talked about the ankle, though the Buccaneers coach says they didn't talk about it on the sideline during the game:
Antonio Brown posting text messages alleged to be from Bruce Arians, showing correspondence about his injured ankle.
Note: The coaching staff knew he tweaked his ankle that week. What Bruce Arians is saying is, they didn’t talk about the ankle on the sideline. AB said they did. pic.twitter.com/Yp79vHoJwz
— JennaLaineESPN (@JennaLaineESPN) January 6, 2022
The stories are obviously at odds and this would all be odd for a game against the Jets with a division title firmly clinched for the Buccaneers, but you can't put anything past a football coach and there was still a potential No. 1 seed on the line. Also if these texts are real, Arians starting the text with “This is BA” is certainly weird. Was this the first time they had texted each other? Is Arians just a weird texter like that?
Still, there should at least be some skepticism surrounding Brown given his history, especially considering all of his other activity on social media that now also has him going after Tom Brady, who vouched for him after the walkout and who has defended him for a long time. Brown is also calling out Brady's longtime trainer, Alex Guerrero.
One still must also wonder just how things played out on that sideline and why Brown wouldn't have simply had the medical staff check him out and deem him unable to play. Brown claims Arians refused to do that, but that's extremely bizarre. Again, maybe it did play out that way and Arians was just looking for any reason to boot Brown after the vaccine card incident, but it doesn't make much sense.
We'll see where this goes next.
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