Not long ago, the artist known as "Hollywood" demanded a trade away from the Baltimore Ravens football organization. The Ravens abided by his request, and sent Marquise Brown to Arizona to play for the Cardinals. The wideout didn't do much in the desert, but he doesn't feel like regretting his decision.
Asked about his role in the Cardinals offense and if it was "concerning" to him, Brown told reporters attending the training camp press conference (h/t Bo Brack!). "Not really."
"I mean, I played in Baltimore," Brown said while letting a little laugh escape his mouth.
“Not really. I mean I played in Baltimore.”
— Bo Brack (@BoBrack) August 9, 2023
Hollywood Brown jokes he wasn’t concerned about his role in the new Arizona Cardinals offense because he already played in a run heavy scheme for the Ravens.@PHNX_Cardinals |#BirdGang pic.twitter.com/6wqG4Ts98D
Perhaps there will be a time (if we're not already past it judging by Brown's mediocre-at-best 2022 campaign) in which Hollywood would realize that he was wrong and everybody else was right.
Or just that he should have never rush-demanded a trade and instead just patiently wait for, say, the arrival of a new Offensive Coordinator in Todd Monken. Just saying!
If Brown didn't like the run-heavy scheme, that's now solved with the arrival of Monken. If Brown didn't like playing under his bestie Lamar Jackson because of his "shaky" health, that is not looking any better in the desert with Kyler Murray and his ACL injury putting the Cardinals' 2023 season in real trouble.
"When I met with these guys and they told me their philosophies and their thought process, I was like, OK, I can work with it," Brown said. "This is something that we need as a team, and we can thrive in.”
It will be easy for Brown to improve the numbers he put up last season when he finished the year with 709 yards on 67 receptions scoring 3 TDs. As many as 34 WRs did that in 2022, so Brown can be seen as a borderline WR1 considering there are 32 franchises in the NFL.
Brown spent three seasons in Baltimore getting 71, 100, and 146 targets as his role grew in the offense, but he wasn't seemingly pleasing with the Ravens' "run-heavy" scheme. Just for context, Brown's 317 targets through his time in Baltimore rank 23rd league-wide among receivers. Talk about a run-happy playbook!
Larry Fitzgerald was the target leader of the Cardinals between 2018 and 2020 (similar three-year span) getting 293 targets. DeAndre Hopkins got 224 between 2020 and 2021. Christian Kirk got 290 targets in the same span as Brown's Ravens days.
Maybe someone ends up regretting demanding a trade not long from now.