The stunt that Antonio Brown pulled in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Week 17 clash against the New York Jets in 2021 stunned NFL fans. In the third quarter, the former WR took off his jersey and walked off the field. Soon after the game, then-head coach Bruce Arians said that Brown was “no longer a Buc.”
Watch What’s Trending Now!
Now, however, Arians looks back at the incident in a different light.
“That’s probably my fault,” Arians said on Not Just Football With Cam Heyward. “Mike [Evans] got hurt. Chris [Godwin] got hurt. He got like 12 or 13 targets the week before. We thought we’d tear the Jets up. Well, they double-teamed him the whole time. So [Rob Gronkowski] was getting the balls in the middle, and he got upset at halftime and just said he wasn’t going back in. He wasn’t getting the ball. And I told him to get the hell out of here, and he took it literally.”
Brown claimed that he had hurt his ankle and was too injured to play. The coach, however, claimed that Brown had voiced a lack of targets. When informed that the WR had refuted those claims, Arians said, “The players know the truth.”
In 2020, Brown was targeted 61 times, fourth-most among Bucs pass-catchers. In 2021, he was targeted 62 times, but was behind running back Leonard Fournette, who was targeted 84 times.
Former Bucs quarterback Tom Brady was compassionate toward his wide receiver. In the postgame press conference, he confessed that the Bucs want to see Brown at his best. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to happen with Tampa Bay. But it was Brown’s last season in the NFL, and he never made a comeback.
“I always hoped for the best for him,” Brady said in 2025. “And I met him, and I always admired him as a player, and then I got to play with him and I actually saw in the meeting room, like how he could take information and bring it to the field
However, Arians confirmed on the Not Just Football podcast that he doesn’t harbor any dislike for Antonio Brown.
“I love AB to death, man,” Arians confessed. “Nobody works harder on the practice field than AB. Nobody plays harder than AB. It’s just sometimes, he gets in his own way.”
Antonio Brown was easily one of the most productive receivers in the league when he was an active player. In his 12 seasons, Brown tallied seven seasons with more than 1,000 receiving yards. At Tampa Bay, he’d recorded 1,028 receiving yards, and eight touchdowns.
Arians’ confession proves that the superstar receiver simply couldn’t get out of his own way. Brown traded his final shot at an NFL comeback for an unforgettable spectacle of pure drama.