NFL teams hold onto 30-year-old franchise wide receivers like a 14-year-old boy holds on to images of the first pinup he found under his older brother’s mattress. Both are clung to until they fade or something better comes along.
So how does a team’s brightest star all of a sudden become available to the highest bidder? In the case of Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, the cause is a culmination of incidents and behaviors that finally moved the needle into the red.
A crumbling relationship with Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger went public when Roethlisberger called out Brown for poor route running.