Former NFL All-Pro WR Antonio Brown graduated from Central Michigan University last Saturday, Dec. 17. Brown left in 2009 after starring for the football team to enter the NFL draft. In a post on X, he captioned a video with “This for you mama Adrianne King.”
AB Was A Star In The Making At CMU
Brown had 3,199 receiving yards and 22 touchdowns in three seasons with the Chippewas. He was MAC freshman of the tear in 2007, two-time MAC special teams player of the year, All-MAC conference all three seasons, and a two-time All-American.
He had big success in the NFL as well, mainly with the Pittsburgh Steelers and a Super Bowl championship with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Hall Of Fame Trajectory
Brown was a seven-time Pro Bowl selection and five-time All-Pro. He led the league twice in receptions and receiving yards. He also led the league in receiving touchdowns and was named to the NFL’s 2010s All-Decade team.
He is top-25 all-time in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns in the NFL. Which likely places him just outside the Hall of Fame.
It’s tough, because his peak years were up there with some of the best. But the excellence wasn’t sustained, and then there are is the off field behavior, which is always a factor whether consciously or subconsciously.
“I say this, and I mean it,” ESPN’s Ryan Clark, a former teammate of AB’s, posted on X back in August. “[Antonio Brown] is a hall of Famer. I don’t think he gets in on the First Ballot because we know how that goes, but for a period he was one of the ‘greatest’ to ever do it.”
Football Reference has a metric called Hall of Fame monitor. It quantifies a player’s career relative to Hall of Fame members. AB has a score of 104.8. The average Hall of Famer is 104. AB is sitting right on that line.
“Brown was on a Hall of Fame trajectory, but he did not sustain it,” said NFL historian John Turney earlier this year. “He derailed it. His peak was high enough, but certain milestones within his reach, 1,000 catches, 100 TDs, won’t be achieved — not because of injuries but due to his decisions, and that will probably cost him the Hall of Fame.”
It’s easy to reduce AB to the caricature we see on social media. Maybe the bizarre behavior is a cry for help. Maybe he’s just a rich dude acting out. Maybe it’s a combination of both or something else entirely.
But we do know at his peak he was among the best.
