2020 NFL Off-season

College football blogger Spencer Hall tweeted the mock headline, "Two Dead, Three Missing as Browns' Boat Capsizes."

 

There's a name I haven't heard in a while, mostly because I quit Twitter a few years ago. He was a good follow, even if he seemed to spend waayy too much time on social media.

 

Having raiders and buccaneers at an event like this just wouldn't gel with the values of the National Football League.

 

NFL’s Saints fight to shield emails in Catholic abuse crisis

who dat not us i can assure you

 

One of the popular fan theories is that Antonio Brown suffered permanent brain damage due to the dirty hit by Vontaze Burfict that knocked him out near the end of a playoff game in January 2016. This story is making the rounds again, this time with Pittsburgh talk radio host Colin Dunlap insisting that Brown's decline was caused by CTE. Brown was one of the Pittsburgh athletes who helped when hearing about Dunlap's very young daughter was diagnosed with cancer in Nov. 2016. Brown made a $100,000 donation to Children's Hospital. Of course, that was at least 10 months after the hit by Burfict, but I guess it could be a steady decline rather than a sudden change after that hit.

Dunlap is as likely to lead with his heart or his fists as he is with his head, especially given that Brown helped when his daughter was sick, but does anybody think he is right? I've never been a fan of diagnosis from a distance, especially when it is done by somebody who isn't a doctor, but is Brown a cautionary tale about the dangers of football. Perhaps it wasn't just the Burfict hit, but a combination of all the big hits he has suffered while playing the game. Or perhaps he is just a complete and utter jackass and the Steelers managed to keep him quiet and relatively happy until last season. I wouldn't be shocked to see an athlete fall apart once he no longer has the support system of a team keeping him in line.

Part of this is me wondering if the guy needs jail or help. Part is me wondering if this is just another brain ruined by football.

Here is more on the theory that Burfict's hit led to Brown's downfall.

Dunlap: Burfict Hit Changed Antonio Brown's Life

 

Trying to diagnose something like this from a distance is pretty much impossible, and anyone who thinks they can tie his mental condition to one specific hit is being kind of ridiculous.

Having said that, whatever is going on with Antonio Brown is a lot deeper than him just being an asshole. This seems to be severe mental illness that has gotten progressively worse over several months. Is it CTE? I don't know, but it sure would help explain it.

 

The worst part is that there’s literally 100 thousand people or 10 times 100,000 people suffering from what Brown seems to suffer from who never had his privileges and wealth and health care and network of well connected people in a position to grant him the best care available. Are Tomlin and Rosenhaus leaches or willfully ignorant or did they try and help? Is this disease so impossible to manage? its not easy. And takes a lot of support and moments of lucidity to seek and accept help and care.

 

That is another part I'm wondering about. I have no doubt that Rosenhaus is a leach who exploited Brown as long as he could, perhaps cleaning up enough messes to keep him playing.

I have no delusions about Tomlin or anyone else with the Steelers being much better, but I would like to think it was just ignorance on their part. I genuinely do think part of what we've seen from Brown since the Patriots cut him is more a matter of seeing what happens when he no longer has the structure of a team to help him keep it together, but I guess it is possible that the Steelers were just covering for him. If the allegations that he sexually harassed one woman and sexually assaulted another are true, then the worst of his behavior did happen when he was a Steeler.

 

No NFL team will hire Leach.

 

I mean when you add up the fits of rage and then the paranoia and then the strange after that, it all seems to lead to that area. I mean the hit from Burfict wasn't the first head shot he's taken, but it's probably as nasty a shot as I've seen in recent years. I don't think any human is going to last through more than a couple of those.

 

It wasn't the last one, either. He took a nasty one against the Bengals again the next season. That Burfict hit stands out because it was the playoffs and because the offending player should have been tossed from the league because that was just one of many dirty plays in his career.

 

Aren't NFL players given brain scans or whatever at the start of the year to establish their "baseline" to test for concussions? Brown sounds like another Chris Henry, another troubled receiver who was found to have had CTE after his death at 26.