Surviving Barstool | New Episodes Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday 8PM ETTUNE IN

Antonio Brown Accuses Tom Brady of a Being a Phony Friend Who Only Liked Him Because He's 'a Good Football Player'

Brian Westerholt. Shutterstock Images.

Well, it would appear that over on the shop floor at Antonio Brown's Boomin' Enterprises, they can change the sign to read "THIS WORKPLACE HAS GONE [ 0 ] DAYS WITHOUT AN EMPLOYEE GOING OFF THE RAILS LIKE AN ASSHOLE." And you don't have to be the plant's Sanity Compliance Officer to know who's responsible. 

Brown might have had the rare, uneventful morning. But he went on a podcast that came out this afternoon and had this to say:

Never a dull moment. 

For just a few short paragraphs, but still there's a lot to unpack here. I'll start with the beginning and ending. Anyone who's been paying attention since about September of 2020 has known Tom Brady is running the Buccaneers. Both on the field and off. 

On the field, it became obvious as soon as he scrapped Bruce Arians' offense and started running the same system he perfected in New England. One that is diametrically opposed to Arians' in how it operates pre-snap, how the reads are made post-snap, the nomenclature, protecting schemes, the works. 

It became clear Brady was making the personnel as soon as Brown joined the team after Arians had publicly declared he would never coach Brown again. From that point on, he became Junior Soprano when he was under federal indictment. The boss in name only, but with Tony really running the family business. A figurehead. But still, it's remarkable to hear Brady is actually doing the contract talks. That's just an astonishing admission.

While this can't sit well with either Arians or GM in-name-only Todd Licht to be emasculated like this, I can't imagine a guy like Brady, who's so carefully crafted his image as one of the guys, just another employee who doesn't want to be a bigger part of the team than anyone else, actually being the Kingpin behind the scenes. 

But the major point here is Brown trying to act surprised to find out Brady only liked him because he can catch footballs. Gee, ya think? We Bradysexuals have been saying that since we first heard Brown was living with him, Gisele and the kids at their Brookline mansion. He moved a mercurial, unstable, immature nutjob with a history of disturbances, tossing furniture off balconies, and assorted other anti-social episodes under his roof. And there's not a man, woman or child among us who thought it was because there's a beautiful friendship there. That there's just the kind of interpersonal chemistry between them that made Riggs & Murtaugh mesh so well. 

Brady eats dehydrated algae and goes to bed at 8 p.m. Brown missed parts of Raiders camp because he got frostbite on his feet in a cryogenics lab. That's not opposites attracting. That's Brady hoping to save a guy he knows is toxic because he's sick of trying to move the chains with N'Keal Harry, Josh Gordon, Ben Watson, and the last legs of Julian Edelman. He took Brown in not out of love, but out of expedience. Brown was his Rescue Receiver. 

And it worked. For as long as an experiment like this could work. And at the first sign of a strain on the relationship, Brown went back to his default setting and took a flamethrower to every last piece of wood on every bridge. 

Like the Native American folk tale of the scorpion who asks the fox for a lift across the river.  The fox says, "No. You'll just sting me." And the scorpion assures him he won't because, "If do, then we'll both drown." So the fox agrees.  And when they're haflway across and the scorpion stings him and the fox asks why he'd go that, the reply is, "What did you expect? I'm a scorpion." What did Tom Brady expect? He's Antonio Brown. 

Lastly, any man who must say, "I'm an alpha male," is no true alpha male. 

You do have to appreciate the nice use of "fuck you too professionally" at the end. Best wishes to the coach of Browns next team. And the one after that. And the one after that. And …