Antonio Brown has broken his silence in part on his motivations for using Tom Brady’s marriage dissolution and uniquely inefficient playing this season as fodder for his social media accounts. The explanation was at times logical and at times comical but provided yet another glimpse into the mind of the most polarizing ex-NFL player.
When the hosts asked Brown if he was still rooting for Tom Brady, he explained the difference between football industry friends and real friends.
“Im not a part of the NFL anymore; I walked away from it; I could care less about it. I’m a Black rockstar; I don’t have to answer the way you think I’m tweeting or the way you think is going on,” Brown said on the “PBD” podcast. “I don’t have to have an explanation for what I do. I’m not in the NFL, where I have to give a conducive answer to what I’m doing or what I’m showing. It’s entertainment, and there’s some truth in it and that’s it. I’ve got a football relationship with guys, man, that’s it is; I don’t play football. It is what it is.”
When asked if he and Brady are friends off the field, Brown retorted with a question. “What do you call a friend off the field? What is a friend to you?” Brown asked.
When the host answered that a friend is someone you treat with respect and who treats you with mutual respect, Brown had definitions to share.
“That’s not a friend, that is a natural citizen. That’s being a human being, human to human. I should treat you with respect because respect is natural. I don’t owe no one respect man; respect is earned man, it is what it is. I don’t have a relationship with Tom Brady. I don’t play football, that’s it.”
When the host asked why he would put a picture of himself on Tom Brady’s body to superimpose himself in the marital unrest conversations surrounding Tom Brady, Brown had an interesting answer.
“Fans put out pictures every time; it’s a real video of a situation. It’s funny; it’s a meme, that’s what fans do. [Brady going through a divorce] ain’t got nothing to do with me, bro. People capitalize on my life and situations every time; it don’t matter, so what. It’s life, bro. Pull up how many times people sell shirts and make meme’s and do funny sh*t at me. Now we do it at him. Its a problem? It’s life, its fans.”
— AB (@AB84) October 29, 2022
“Bro, [Brady] had my back to play football to help him; no one got my back. They get a service. We are in the service business. Bro, I didn’t want to come back and play, bro. Why would I want to play with these guys? How are they going to force me to play football? [Brady] considered me, and he came down here to Miami to talk me into helping him to win. I don’t need to play football. I already showed you guys my account in 2019, had the interview to show you what I was planning and how I was planning.”
Antonio Brown will stay polarizing, like his recent choice to make a picture of Kyrie Irving his profile pic. As the world keeps paying attention to his new “Black rockstar” stature, cringy discomfort comes for free.
