That is surely not how Brady saw it at the time. But he, as much as anybody in football, enabled Antonio Brown. But Brady wanted him, and Brady got him.īrady seems to genuinely believe that he knows better ways for most people to live, and he seemed to think he could help Brown. After Brady signed with the Bucs, Arians publicly dismissed the idea of Brown joining the team. It was a simple story of the Bucs squeezing considerable production out of a man who had not changed.Īnd who wanted that more than anybody? Tom Brady.īrady was the main reason Brown was in the league at all. There was never any redemption story here. It was searingly obvious that Brown saw the sum of his transgressions not as mistakes he made, but as stuff that happened to him. He did this time and time again, most recently when he came back from his suspension and dismissed reporters who just wanted to create “drama.” He repeatedly dismissed anybody who questioned him by saying he just wanted to focus on football. He didn’t even seem to change his behavior. ‘He said, she’s saying.’ ” Given numerous chances during his mandatory media availability before the Super Bowl, all Brown could muster was, “I’ve been through some things, but that’s life.” He never detailed what he did, or apologized to many he wronged. There’s no support, there’s no egos, there’s no rules in it, anyone can come after me for anything. I just feel like I’m a target so, anybody can come against me and say anything I have to face. In January 2020, when he was still unsigned, he told ESPN, “I feel like I never really got in a conflict with no woman. He did not publicly own up to his mistakes. There was never any indication that Brown had learned from his transgressions.

This year, when Brown was suspended for three games for procuring a fake COVID-19 vaccine card, Arians was asked about that zero-tolerance policy.

Saying, “Don’t do that again!” was no way to help him address them. Instead, in October 2020, Arians told NBC Sports’s Peter King, “He screws up one time, he’s gone,” regarding his new star, which sounded great but was really just ridiculously shallow thinking. People need to be honest about their failures and own them every day until owning them is essential to their existence. Second chances (and Brown was on his fourth) are not just about second chances. The Bucs got what they deserved for signing Brown. The rest was just-Brown actually and repeatedly used this word-“drama.” But he was still a productive football player. Sure, he had been accused of all sorts of misconduct. But Brady and the Bucs seemed to convince themselves that playing football helped Brown, when it really just allowed him to ignore his serious problems. That is when Brady said, “I think everybody should do what they can to help him in ways that he really needs it.” That is a lovely sentiment, and Brady seemed genuine when he said it. Brown stopped being a great football player Sunday.

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