Patriots release Antonio Brown

On September 20th, the New England Patriots issued a statement on social media that entailed the release of the controversial wide receiver Antonio Brown. After being a part of the team for only one game, another accusation from a woman regarding sexual harassment has ultimately clouded Brown’s career.

Just days after Brown signed with the Patriots back in September 7th, former trainer Britney Taylor had filed a lawsuit against him. In the federal lawsuit, she accused him of 2 allegations of sexual assault in 2017 and forcible rape in 2018.

About a week after the news of the trainer’s lawsuit on Brown, Sports Illustrated-in a follow-up story-reported accusations from a second woman on September 16, 2019. In the report titled There’s More History to Antonio Brown’s History, a mural artist’s encounter with Brown in 2017 is told chronologically. The female artist states, “I was about 40% done on the second day, and I’m on my knees painting the bottom, and he walks up to me butt-ass naked, with a hand cloth covering his [penis] and starts having conversations with me.” From then on, she disregarded the act and continued painting until her session ended abruptly. Concluding the incident, the article states that the woman does not want to press charges but was rather “bothered” by Brown’s actions.

Four days after the article, Sports Illustrated then published a report regarding Antonio Brown as an included accuser “in a series of text messages claiming she was only out for money, asking others to look into her background, and including a photo of her kids.” Feeling threatened, the artist had then asked through her lawyer for the NFL to intervene.
In the message published by the Patriots twitter account, it conveys the team’s outlook for releasing the star. Stating, “The New England Patriots are releasing Antonio Brown. We appreciate the hard work of many people over the past 11 days, but we feel that it is best to move in a different direction at this time.” Following the receiver’s release, Brown’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, tweeted, “it’s unfortunate things didn’t work out with the Patriots, but Antonio is healthy and is looking forward to his next opportunity in the NFL. He wants to play the game he loves and he hopes to play for another team soon.”

When Sports Anchor Dana Jacobson asked Head Coach of the Patriots, Bill Belichick, about the “last straw” before releasing Brown amidst the upcoming game against the New York Jets, his response: “Today we are focused on the Jets today.” In addition to this, an awkward stare from the coach ended the short interview. Surely Belichick is ready to move on from the controversy.

In multiple twitter posts from AB on the day of his release, he shows his gratitude for the team alongside questionable captions. Amongst the posts, captions like “The marathon continues” and “Just got fired on Friday” have been leaving the media uncertain of his actions, however, the most jarring post appears just two days after. On Sunday, September 22, he states in a post that he will be discontinuing the NFL and NFL owners are to blame as they simply have too much power; he posts, “Will not be playing in the @NFL anymore these owners can cancel deals do whatever they want at anytime we will see if the @NFLPA hold them accountable sad they can just void guarantees anytime going on 40m 2 months will see if they pay up!”.
The future for Antonio Brown’s career is curdled at this point and the NFL’s investigations will continue to look into the accusations against him.