Pittsburgh Steelers Don’t Want Antonio Brown In AFC North

The Pittsburgh Steelers are now shopping wide receiver Antonio Brown. The team and player reached something of a mutual understanding following a meeting with Brown and team owner Art Rooney II though both sides agreed it was ‘time to move on’. Now Pittsburgh is hoping to not have to deal with Brown on the playing field. The team is trying to avoid trading him within the AFC North or to the New England Patriots. Best case scenario would be to send him to the NFC.

General Manager Kevin Colbert had to explain this obvious exercise in self interest to the clueless media:

“I mean, when you’re trading away a player like this who could determine your own record and your own Super Bowl potential, of course you want to not trade him to teams that might be a factor. But if those teams step up and say, ‘Look, we’ll give you the best picks or the best players,’ then we have to make that judgment. OK, yeah, they’re a competitor, but what they’re giving us far exceeds what these other folks are willing to do. So will we be selective? It depends on what the compensation is.”

Why this came off as such a shock to the Pittsburgh media is not known. This is a very common practice throughout sports. NBA teams in the Eastern Conference prefer to ship players to the Western Conference. National League teams would rather trade players to American League teams. So on and so forth.

The word on the streets is that Pittsburgh is seeking a first round draft pick for Brown. Colbert has already started to see some interest from teams around the league:

“Teams have reached out. I’d say we’ve had three teams that have touched base with us, and we’ll see where that grows. I think it will continue to grow.”

There’s no doubt that Brown is an exceptional wide receiver. He holds the NFL record with six consecutive 100 catch seasons but has been a serious pain to deal with. He skipped out of practice in the final week of the season and has taken umbrage with the fact that quarterback Ben Roethlisberger cares deeply about the performance of his team.

Any team that acquires Brown will have to pay him guaranteed money. He has base salaries of $12.6 million, $11.3 million and $12.5 million remaining on his contract though none are guaranteed. He’s to be paid a $2.5 million roster bonus in mid-March and the Steelers would no doubt like to have him packing his bags by then.