It is OK to Still Be Leery About Antonio Brown on the Patriots?

I’ve already issued all the mea culpas I will for being wrong about the Patriots interest in Antonio Brown. But still, thanks, Hubbs for the reminder:

But it’s OK. I own that. Getting it wrong comes with the job when you’re trying to predict the most unpredictable organization of any kind in the world. When you have to read the lines of code to find the patterns and algorithms that the Matrix is built from. And you have no Morpheus to give you the red pill that will take you down the rabbit hole. I’m not complaining, mind you; I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But just because the Patriots made the most shocking, unexpected, groundbreaking, Earthquaking, world-shaking move in the NFL in … well, probably in forever, doesn’t mean everyone is on board with it. Of course we’re all looking at the fact that there are only four current players who’ve had 1,600 Receiving Yards in a season and three of them play for the Patriots and get excited. How can you not be? I’m hearing stories from friends like one who was on a golf course and he could hear the screams coming across the fairways from one foursome to the next as the news spread. Another was at his kids’ football game and said total strangers were high-fiving as word moved through the stands like The Wave. Until eventually it reached the sidelines and the kids went nuts. It’s almost going to reach that status where everyone remembers where they were went they first heard the news. Like 9/11. Or OJ joining Twitter.

And yet, while we’re all understandably bananas because this is so fucking wildly insane, this is the furthest thing from a 100% unanimous, enthusiastic endorsement. This was half excitement, half this:

Antonio Brown is a special, transcendent, generational, almost unstoppable talent. That hasn’t changed. Neither has the fact that he’s a special, transcendent, generational, almost unstoppable nutjob. A harmless nutjob to be sure. I mean, he’s a fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizen and all. But a nutjob. The man is a coin. You can’t separate his athletic heads from his crackpot tails. He’s been a solipsistic self-centered, Me First diva who acts like the sun rises and sets out his butthole for a long time now. It’s well documented. The first thing I can remember him doing off the field was that bizarro Facebook Live thing he did in the lockerroom after a playoff game while Mike Tomlin was telling his team to watch the social media stuff. And calling the Patriots assholes. And it’s just 17 minutes of Mr. Big Chest mugging for the camera and going “Uh huh. Yeah. That’s right.” Sitting through the whole thing should be a rite of passage to achieve manhood in a tribe.

That’s just one example, but you know the rest. Up to and including him getting suspended by two different coaches on back-to-back weeks until the Patriots took him in and gave him a three hots and a cot. My brother and I were trying to put a percentage on Browns chances of not going off the rails in New England. Even allowing for the fact he’s here on a one year deal. That he only has to play nice with others for five months and then he can break some other franchise’s bank. And accounting for a strong locker room that doesn’t suffer weirdos who demand special treatment gladly. We put it at 10%.

We’re giving Brown one chance in 10 that he doesn’t have some kind of a meltdown. When he finds himself with 2 catches for 14 yards in a win where James White catches nine and Sony Michel runs for 120 yards. When he comes out of a game with fewer snaps than James Develin because the gameplan called for a lot of power runs behind Jimmy Neckroll. Or the first time he’s coming back to the huddle after he was open but Brady threw it to Edelman instead. I hope I’m wrong – again – but he’s been counting his touches for a long time now. And stirring up shit when he doesn’t get them to his satisfaction. And if he’s ever proven that team goals are what matter to him most, I must’ve been blackout drunk because I definitely do not recall it. And expecting someone to change after two nasty breakups where they were totally in the wrong is a big, big ask.

There’s an old Native American fable about a scorpion who asked a fox to let him ride on his back across a river. The fox refuses saying “When we get out there, you’ll sting me.”

“Why would I do that?” the scorpion replies. “If I did, then we’ll both drown.” So the fox agrees. Then halfway across the river, the scorpion stings him.”

“What did you do that for?” the fox cries. “Now we’ll both die.”

“What did you expect?” he replies. “I’m a scorpion. It’s in my nature.”

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Antonio Brown is a strong enough presence to drown the Patriots. But do think it’s in his nature to try.