The AB trade…4 years later

Hindsight is always 20/20, but it’s fun to go back and see if the pundits were even close to being correct on something as significant as the AB trade. At the time, most of the so-called “experts” were pontificating about what a steal AB was for the Raiders with only having to give up a 3rd and 5th round draft pick. The Steelers drafted Diontae Johnson with the 3rd round pick and Zach Gentry with the 5th round pick the next month. Both of those players provided good value and have been significant contributors over the last four seasons. DJ has some AB qualities while not having the diva tendencies of AB and Gentry has provided some value as a blocking TE and good teammate, as well as catching the last pass of Ben’s storied career. So all in all, while neither DJ or Gentry are as immensely talented as AB, I believe the Steelers got the best of that deal. Shoot, if they’d gotten nothing you could make a case that unloading him was a good move. It would have been a case of addition by subtraction.

https://www.nfl.com/news/steelers-trade-antonio-brown-to-raiders-who-won-who-lost-0ap3000001021716

 

And we must not forget that the value of AB was so low at this time.It's crazy that Tomlin was able to keep AB in check for 7-8 years....

AB didn't do 7 practices with the raiders under Jon Gruden!

 

WHO?

 

WHO?

 

Talent like that with a mature head would be a thing of beauty to watch.

 

I’m surprised Gentry didn’t make the practice squad

 

What an absolute waste of the last few years of his career! We would have been talking about AB in terms of being one of the all-time greats, especially if the Steelers had managed to win a Super Bowl or two when he was there. Now he’ll just go down as one of the all-time psychos.

 

I blame Burfict.

 

He was a problem before Burfict.

 

That one might be better WITH a little weed in his system. Any excuse at this point.

 

This one hurt me so bad because AB was probably the best player I have seen play for the Steelers since I've been alive (34 years old). Having him do some dumb **** the last game of a season then just be gone was so... anti climactic for such an insanely good player to leave like that.

 

Any chance you are in the wrong post

 

Hell... for me, he was second to Troy.


Problem is.... AB fell way off the wayside... and sadly still is.

 

No, he was the 5th round pick we got for AB

 

Try to keep up, jeh.

 

All the Raiders got were a pair of frozen feet and a headache.

 

It’s been FOUR years? Sheesh.

 

This probably would have made more sense if I had read more than the first sentence in the original post

 

Man, he's way off the wayside. It's sad to see, and unfortunately not an uncommon sight for former athletes. I hope he can find a way to turn his life around before he destroys it all. At this point, that doesn't seem to be a likely outcome.

 

Not to diminish anything Tomlin did or didn't do, it's my belief that had Dan not passed away Brown would have remained a productive player for the Steelers for at least two of the four years. It wasn't until after Dan's passing that the off field stuff started to surface and we began to hear stories about Tomlin allowing him to live in a rental house instead of the dorms at St. Vincent. Of course I could be wrong who knows.

 

Story the other day where he threatened some of his players when they spoke out about how he was managing the team. Wanted his assistant to run out to the car and get a gun. At a certain point he needs to not have enablers or fans that cut him a break. He needs lots of help at this point.

 

It seems like he's going down a bad path, enablers or not. The only person who can help AB right now is AB. He needs to deal with some mental health issues in order to put himself in a situation to make better life choices. Its a psychologist/psychiatrist... whatever he needs to do. But if he doesn't get help, he is on the path to ruining the rest of his life.

 

The only one that can save AB from this self destructive ending ... is God Almighty!

 

He's really on a bad path. Really bad. His current trend he is still on is not paying people who he legitly owes $ to, whether it be for child support, labor for football, chef bills, league dues - it's all really bad. Who knows what's in another man's mind, but come the frick on, his endless pursuit of not paying people he owes is manic, mentally insane and some kind of a disorder. He's been on this trend for a while but he's moved up from just ripping off personal chefs to now not paying football players, his kid's mother and even the football league he owned a team in. He just seems to convince himself he doesn't owe money to people who he obviously does. Who does that? To that level? I mean, how can anyone respect him as a man?

 

I got to say, it turns out that Ryan Clark predicted all of AB's erratic behavior. After AB got that big Steeler contract, RC stated that we were all gonna see the real AB at that point, or something along those lines.