Antonio Brown, Steelers continue down ugly road

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Antonio Brown are potentially headed for a nasty divorce. How did we get here?

The NFL playoffs are officially underway. Still, Antonio Brown and the Pittsburgh Steelers are still managing to maintain a portion of the limelight.

And that isn’t a good thing.

Brown and the Steelers are heavily at odds with each other. For starters, there was reportedly an altercation between Brown and Ben Roethlisberger. Brown also skipped practices, and during Pittsburgh’s Week 17 game at home against Cincinnati — a game in which the Steelers were fighting for their postseason lives. Brown left the stadium at halftime, showcasing his mental attitude towards both his teammates and coaching staff.

The situation between team and player is ugly, and getting uglier. If things continue trending this way, it’s hard to imagine the Steelers bringing Brown back for another season. The team is reportedly are listening to trade offers, which is its only reasonable option at this point. As painful as it is for Steelers fans to see arguably the best receiver in football potentially on the way out — Brown is a headache the Steelers need to rid themselves of.

For both sides, the situation has been escalating all season. Brown threatened an ESPN reporter, asked for a trade via Twitter, was pulled over in a Pittsburgh suburb for going 100 MPH and allegedly threw furniture off a 14th-floor balcony. The entire year has been building up to what could be a hideous divorce between one of the NFL’s iconic franchises and a Hall of Fame player.

If the Steelers find a trade suitor for Brown (possibly the San Francisco 49ers), it will leave them with a cap hit of $21 million for the 2019 season. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the team is restructuring and extending Roethlisberger’s contract, which would help them open up additional cap space.

It should be noted that trading Brown would open up money in the long term. Brown’s deal runs through 2021, but those final two years would be off Pittsburgh’s books with a trade.

In the receiving game, the Steelers would still have JuJu Smith-Schuster to carry the torch after he led the team in receiving yardage. Still, one wonders if he suffers without a player the caliber of Brown pulling coverage away.

Pittsburgh will still be plenty talented when it returns to the field in 2019. It just might not be with some of the familiar faces that Steelers have become so accustomed to seeing at Heinz Field.

And as painful as that notion is, that’s could well be what is best for both the Steelers and Brown.