Rodney Harrison believes he knows one of the roots of Antonio Brown’s latest problem.
The former New England Patriots star said that he believes the former All-Pro wide receiver could be dealing with brain trauma from playing football. He even brought up the hit-to-the-head Brown received from former Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict during the 2016 NFL playoffs and how it may have affected him.
“I think he’s suffering from CTE,” Harrison explained. “I think he’s definitely got some symptoms. He’s snappy, mood swings. I mean, you look at this hit from Vontaze Burfict. You look at this hit, and he was completely out. I played 15 years in the league. I was never completely out like that. He’s completely out. That is a concussion. That is something that is going to stick with you for the rest of your life.”
Harrison added that Brown’s antics might be a cry out for help.
“I would like for the league to come in and really help this guy because what they witnessed and what we witnessed on Sunday was mental illness. It was CTE. It was him making a bad decision. It was all those different things,” Harrison said. “When you’re suffering from CTE — and I got many, many friends that suffer from CTE. We all suffer from CTE. If you play football for an extended period of time, you got hit in the head, you suffer from CTE. That was clearly something that just made him snap, and I promise you at this point in time, he’s sitting at home, and he’s not happy. He’s not happy about walking off the field, quitting.”
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As you fully know, Brown was spotted on the sidelines enraged as he stripped off his uniform and shoulder pads and threw his gloves and undershirt into the stands before running off the field and into the tunnel.
Since then, Brown has revealed he was ‘cut’ from the team while on the sidelines. He also revealed he had an MRI on his ankle on Monday, and it showed he had “broken bone fragments stuck in my ankle, the ligament torn from the bone and cartilage loss, which are beyond painful.”
He won’t be signing with a team to finish out the year or make a playoff run, so we will have to wait and see if a team wants to take a chance on him in the offseason.
