A.J. Brown deflects self-created trade buzz, but appears to still leave door open

A.J. Brown is no stranger to being traded around the NFL Draft. That's what happened when he ended up on his current team, the Philadelphia Eagles, after the Tennessee Titans felt they couldn't pay the wide receiver, so ultimately dealt him to the City of Brotherly Love. And that's obviously worked out quite well for both the Eagles and Brown.

But after the disastrous end to the 2023 season with Philadelphia, there was some speculation that the Eagles could possibly shake things up and try to move on from Brown via trade this offseason. That, of course, died quickly and we didn't think too much of it beyond that...

Until Thursday when Brown's social media activity started raising some questions.

On Thursday, it was first reported that the New England Patriots could be interested in trading back from the No. 3 overall pick and would love to target a wide receiver in any such trade. In the wake of that, Brown also changed his profile picture on various social media accounts to Tom Brady in a Patriots uniform while also following Jacoby Brissett and K.J. Osborn, both of whom signed in New England this offseason, in Instagram.

And with that, a fervor about A.J. Brown being traded to the Patriots was born.

A.J. Brown tries to deflect trade buzz he helped create

That frenzy around a potential Brown trade forced the wide receiver to address the situation on X/Twitter. Brown said that he had just watched The Dynasty docuseries and that Brady is his favorite player of all time. He didn't think that the profile picture change "would cause controversy".

Let's unpack this a little bit, though. Taking everything Brown said at face value, it's completely plausible that he loves and respects Tom Brady as an NFL legend, so the changing of the profile pick could very much be the Eagles wideout buying into being doubted after last season's disappointment for the team and trying to channel TB12 energy.

At the same time, Brown failed to address the questions about following two of the newest members of the Patriots. More importantly, while he did say he didn't mean to cause controversy, he didn't outright admit anything regarding a potential trade. There's a way to read his statement that is akin to "I'm sorry that made you feel that way" as opposed to "I didn't mean what I said, I'm sorry."

Perhaps that's reading a bit too much into the situation, which I won't deny. But there are a few too many coincidences here for Brown's response to the storm he helped create to fully put down my antenna about a potential trade going down.

Welcome to draft season, where every move is under the microscope and could mean everything or mean absolutely nothing!