As the flames flickered — not intense enough to consume everything but hot enough it was apparent the relationship between Antonio Brown and the Steelers was singed — the criticism of Mike Tomlin’s handling of his superstar receiver began to rage.
"It’s a circus there," an assistant coach from another team told Bleacher Report last September. "And Mike has no control over it." Did he, though?
Might Tomlin have asserted more authority over Brown, drawn more production from him than a typical NFL coach would have managed? In baseball they talk about WAR, a stat that quantifies how many victories a player is worth compared to an average player who'd replace him. This was a war, though, that would have wrecked a "replacement" coach.
TIMELINE: Antonio Brown's drama-filled summer in Oakland, from intro to apology
Even as Brown smoldered through last season, even though he quit on the team before its final regular-season game, he still caught 104 passes and 15 touchdowns. It was his sixth consecutive 100-catch season, an NFL record. He led the league in TD catches even though he skipped the opportunity to roast the Bengals one final time in a Steelers uniform.
We are seeing now what a profound challenge it has been to manage Brown in recent seasons, and perhaps even for longer than that. And we are seeing, from the instant fiasco that has developed around the Raiders, that Steelers management probably handled Brown as ably as anyone could.
Since being traded to Oakland this year, Brown skipped the majority of training camp — after he made a show of arriving in a hot-air balloon, of course — over a specious claim the NFL's new helmet rules were needlessly and uniquely detrimental to him. When he lost his battle with the league to stick with his old gear, he found a new hat and managed to squeeze an endorsement deal out of it.
The team fined him $40,000 for his camp absences and another $13,500 for skipping a walk-through in advance of the Raiders' third exhibition game. When a letter from general manager Mike Mayock arrived informing him of this, Brown posted a copy of the note on Instagram with text that began, “When your own team want to hate you …"
NFL Network’s Ian Rappaport since has reported Brown threatened to punch Mayock in the face at a practice this week, then punted a football and declared, “Fine me for that!” The Athletic’s Vic Tafur reported Brown’s teammates had to “hold him back" from pursuing Mayock.
"Antonio Brown's not in the building today," Mayock told reporters at the Raiders’ headquarters Thursday. "He won’t be practicing. I don’t have any more information for you right now. When I have some, and it becomes appropriate, you guys will all get it. I promise you. But that’s it for today."
From his end, it is. For those observing how rapidly the Brown/Raiders relationship is combusting, it only is the beginning.
Through Brown’s nine seasons in Pittsburgh, there were 837 receptions. That's more than Jerry Rice accumulated in his first nine seasons, more than Randy Moss, Terrell Owens or Larry Fitzgerald. There was a Super Bowl appearance in Brown’s rookie year, when he pulled off a stunning “helmet catch” to help defeat Baltimore in the AFC divisional round at Heinz Field. There was the “Immaculate Extension,” when Brown conjured a division-clinching touchdown pass on Christmas Day in 2016 by catching a quick hook short of the end zone and then fighting through three Ravens defenders at once to extend the ball past the goalline. There was a road playoff win in Kansas City that year, when Brown got open on a third-down out pattern to secure a game-clinching first down.
Of course, the aftermath of that KC victory included Brown’s ludicrous decision to advance his personal brand by putting the team’s locker-room celebration on Facebook Live — even though Tomlin had not yet completed his address to the team.
The next season, after quarterback Ben Roethlisberger missed a wide-open Brown on a second-quarter play against the Ravens that could have resulted in a touchdown, Brown went to the sideline and tossed the Gatorade cooler toward several coaches. He chose not to celebrate a teammate's key touchdown in the 2018 home opener against the Chiefs and later harangued offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner in front of the bench.
It was all there, and who outside the locker room knows how long it festered before becoming a public matter?
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It can be argued Tomlin and the organization were wrong to allow Brown to comport himself in this manner by failing to apply appropriate discipline or not choosing to separate sooner. Or that they were wrong to facilitate it by consistently advancing him money to compensate for a long-term contract he outperformed from 2014 through 2016, and then wrong to usurp that deal with another in 2017 that made him the game’s highest-paid receiver.
They could point to that Baltimore game, though, and to the fight Brown demonstrated on that decisive play. He certainly communicated in that instant a message that he cared about winning. He never held out for a better deal. He was admired as the team's hardest worker.
That's why the Steelers took it as far as they did.
Was it a mistake? Not as big of one, certainly, as allowing Le'Veon Bell to dig a $14.5 million hole in their roster last season. And it certainly was not wrong to let AB go when they did.
