Last Thursday, Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians shot down speculation that Tampa Bay might sign Antonio Brown, saying, “Yeah, it’s not going to happen.”
Brandon Tierney believes that is, unquestionably, the right decision.
“I think you’re out of your mind if you bring this guy into a locker room,” Tierney said on Tiki & Tierney. “I think you’re out of your mind – whether it’s a veteran quarterback like Brady, whether it’s a veteran coach like Bruce Arians, whether it’s a young quarterback like Tua or Sam Darnold or Josh Allen or whomever else is drafted this year. It doesn’t matter. You’re nuts if you bring him back because I don’t believe he’s taken the proper steps to fix himself. I think this is all an act.”
Arians might feel the same way. First he said there was no room for Brown. Then he said there was no money. Neither of those statements, however, is necessarily true. Tierney then pressed further, asking what Arians would do if Brown were willing to sign for the minimum. Even then, not happening.
“I just know him,” Arians said, “and it’s not a fit in our locker room.”
There it is. The cold, hard truth: AB isn’t worth the trouble.
“Obviously it’s just an understanding – an intimate understanding, based on his days with Pittsburgh – of who AB is [and] how he comports himself,” Tierney said. “[It’s] something Bruce Arians wants no part of at this point.”
Tiki Barber agreed.
“Look, he was trying to be nice, BT,” Barber said, laughing. “Like, ‘We got Chris Godwin. We have Mike Evans. We got some young players who we want to look at. There’s just no room for him.’ Then you throw in the salary-cap side of this, whether or not they can fit him in. You can always fit him in. Look at the Saints. They keep signing people over and over again. You can get creative and sign a player if you want to, even if it’s not for the veteran minimum. And then when pressed, we got exactly what we thought we would hear from Bruce Arians. He got mean on us. He was trying to be nice, and he ended up getting mean.”