The best wide receiver on the market is one that currently isn’t employed by an NFL team.
Antonio Brown remains a free agent, but it is expected that he will play again this season. Brown tweeted out this week that he was being blackballed by teams in the NFL (he quickly deleted the tweet), but the league wants nothing to do with that considering what went down with Colin Kaepernick. The NFL needs to play nice with the NFLPA right now as a new CBA needs to be hashed out by next year.
The way this likely plays out with Brown is that a team signs Brown within the next two weeks, forcing the NFL’s hand. Brown is not currently suspended by the league, but the NFL has hinted that they could put the wide receiver on the Commissioner’s Exempt List when he signs with a new team. Doing so, however, would further fire up NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith when it comes time to negotiate.
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When a team signs Brown, it will force the NFL’s hand to wrap up its investigation into the troubled receiver.
Brown’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, said this week that he fully expects Brown to play in the NFL again this season – and CBS Sports Jason La Canfora wrote this week that he “expects interest to pick up for Brown” once the NFL trade deadline passes on Tuesday.
The teams most likely to sign Brown right now are, in order: the Eagles, Cowboys and Chiefs.
Regarding Philadelphia, a person on Twitter this week wrote the following to AB: “The Eagles need you bro. Tell your agent to call them ASAP.”
Brown wrote back, “I do not think so.”
Brown has been incredibly erratic on social media for the better part of a year, so this doesn’t really mean much. He said he was going to retire last month, and now he desperately wants back in to pro football. If anything, Brown’s tweet regarding the Eagles could be a negotiating ploy.
Time and again over the past month, prominent NFL writers have suggested that Howie Roseman would be the most aggressive executive in the NFL’s trade market but so far he has come up empty handed. If Roseman cannot pry AJ Green from the Bengals, expect him to pivot to Brown.
As for the Cowboys, Jerry Jones is going all in on this season and Dallas is expected to make a move in the coming days. Dallas has $21.9 million in cap space available, and Brown could be had for a fraction of that.
The Cowboys also showed last season that they are willing to make a bold move in-season, as they traded for Amari Cooper. In fact it was a move that wound up saving Dallas’ season.
Finally, the Chiefs are another team to keep an eye on when it comes to Brown. Brown expressed interest in joining Kansas City earlier this year ,and the Chiefs have mutual admiration.
“He’s the best I’ve ever seen at this,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach told The Ringer last year about Brown being the prototypical receiver in the Chiefs system. “How many yards and how many catches does he get outside of the play that’s actually called?”
Holding the Chiefs back from making such a move, however, would be the hot water the organization found themselves in with both Kareem Hunt and Tyreek Hill for their off-field incidents. Signing Brown, who has been accused of sexual assault, would be a really bad look for the organization.
