Don’t worry, Antonio Brown to the Ravens will not happen
If you are in the camp of Ravens fans that doesn’t want to see Antonio Brown sign with Baltimore, you don’t have much to worry about:
When it comes to the Ravens signing Antonio Brown, it is starting to become a very unrealistic proposition. There are a ton of reasons why the Ravens aren’t going to sign Brown. Today we’re not getting into a debate. Whether you think the Ravens should make the move or not is irrelevant. Here are the reasons this move is almost an impossibility.
Antonio Brown is facing an eight game suspension, which is honestly the NFL being lenient here. Brown has had legal problems and it seems like he’s in trouble all the time. When he got traded to the now Las Vegas Raiders, Brown made it a nightmare for them.
He essentially worked his way out of his contract and on to the New England Patriots. Brown got into more trouble, the Patriots cut him. That’s the least messy summary possible of his saga to that point. If you want all the details, they aren’t hard to find. The football world has been obsessed with this for over a full calendar year.
Signing Brown would be a PR nightmare for the Baltimore Ravens. It took the franchise a while to recover from the Ray Rice incident and the way they handled it. The Ravens, whose reputation has mostly recovered, probably doesn’t want to jump into troubled waters again. Brown has burned through just about every bridge he has left and he’s turned off football fans across the board.
With an eight game suspension, that would be too much backlash for a player who will miss half of the season. In the face of a global pandemic, you can’t even assume that we’ll get a full season. Can you imagine the Ravens signing Brown, going through that firestorm, and then the season getting shut down before he even had the chance to play?
It would be a nightmare for nothing. All the vitriol from the fans would be for nothing. A media circus would have been gone through and nothing would be gained from it. Uncertainty about the season in general prohibits this move. In fact, signing anybody is a little harder in these time. It’s not just players with baggage, like Brown. Business is weird for in sports right now.
The only reason we’re talking about this right now is because Lamar Jackson has made comments in favor of signing Brown. The Ravens drafted Antonio Brown’s cousin with their first round pick in 2019. Jackson and Marquise Brown have worked out with the free agent wide receiver this offseason. It’s been a conversation all offseason long. No matter what the pros and cons list looks like the “It’s never going to happen” list is longer.
The fact that Jackson wants Antonio Brown on the roster isn’t a reason to put him there. The Browns hired Freddie Kitchens because Baker Mayfield wanted it. That didn’t turn out so great. While it’s impossible not to love the Ravens’ quarterback, and I do see the upside of this move, it’s hard to think that Eric DeCosta and Steve Bisciotti agree with him.
The Bottom Line:
The bottom line is that the Ravens are not in a place where they feel they have to make this move. Even if there are good reasons to sign Brown, there are more than enough reasons to leave him on the free agent market. If Brown wants to play football in 2020, the Ravens aren’t going to be his team.
Legal trouble. Eight game suspension. Crazy backlash. Uncertainty about the season during a global pandemic. All of these things together can make this move a non-starter for Steve Bisciotti. The Ravens fans who don’t want Brown shouldn’t be all that worried. I’d be shocked if this move happened.