Antonio Brown certainly knows how to keep a conversation going.
The former NFL star wide receiver has been on the outside looking in at the league this season ever since he was jettisoned from the New England Patriots in mid-September, but his undeniable talent at the position has kept him in constant talks for a return — as have Brown’s sometimes-cryptic tweets and videos.
Brown has seemed especially intent on returning to the league in the past few weeks, tweeting out an apology to Patriots owner Robert Kraft for the “bad media and drama” caused during his brief stay with the organization along with a separate snippet of him “staying ready” in one of his recent on-field workouts.
But nothing has been quite as strange as the hype video he posted earlier this month from his YouTube account, one that seemed to include a reference to the Green Bay Packers.
Brown’s video plays like a trailer for a movie with cut-together clips that vary from workouts and trophy cases to him driving around in his car, complete with his own narration. At the 38-second mark in the video, though, the camera pans from an Oakland Raiders helmet to one that — while the frame cuts off at the edge of the logo — looks like it could be a Packers helmet.
There is no denying Brown would make a dynamic addition to the Packers offense, but the odds of him catching passes from Aaron Rodgers in the near future are slim at best. Packers Hall of Fame receiver Donald Driver certainly doesn’t seem convinced Brown would make for a good addition to Green Bay’s arsenal.
Not sure about this @_Pantzke
Even Brown himself seemed to shoot down the notion of playing for the Packers earlier this month in response to a fan’s plea on Twitter. While some fans have reacted excitedly to the yellow of the helmet in the video on social media, it bears a much closer resemblance to one from Brown’s original team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
There is also the more important matter of the NFL’s ongoing investigation into rape allegations levied against Brown in September that precipitated his abrupt exit from the Patriots. He has continued to protest his innocence against a pending lawsuit that stems from incidents that occurred during 2017 and 2018.
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Packers Struggling With Healthy Davante Adams
Maybe the fantasy of Antonio Brown in a Packers jersey is satisfying enough for some, but the Packers already have one of the best wideouts in the game catching passes from one of the best arms. Davante Adams missed four games with a turf toe injury and has continued to fight discomfort since returning Week 9, but his speed hasn’t looked significantly hampered after three games back in the lineup.
Instead, the problem could be the Packers’ reliance on their top receiving option in contrast with the team’s other wide receivers. While Adams is a talent deserving of the most targets in the passing game, Rodgers threw 12 passes to him in Sunday’s loss to the Niners while targetting his other receivers just 10 times combined — four for Geronimo Allison, three for Marquez Valdes-Scantling, two for Allen Lazard and one for Jake Kumerow.
Adams has caught seven passes and seen double-digit passes thrown his way in each of his past three games, but he was held to fewer than 44 yards on two of those performances. The outlier was his 118-yard game Week 10 against the Carolina Panthers.
“That’s another thing we have to look at, making sure we’re not overreliant on trying to go to him,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said in diagnosing the offense’s backslide with Adams back in the lineup. “But two of those games have been absolutely abysmal.”
LaFleur also said he and his coaching staff will scheme to get Aaron Jones more looks after the dynamic running back, who has 354 receiving yards on the season, was targetted just once in the Packers’ last two games. He has Packers’ second-most receptions this season with 35, while fellow rusher Jamaal Adams has a third-most 32 catches.
“I think it’s just making sure we make a concerted effort to have him involved, especially in some of the pass concepts,” LaFleur said Wednesday. “It’s good for us long term to make sure we get both him and Jamaal involved in our plan and have a little bit of a rotation there with those guys, but there are certain situations where we definitely want 33 in the game.”
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Does Antonio Brown’s Strange Hype Video Hint at Interest in Packers?