It is possible for news to be both absolutely shocking and completely predictable. We certainly discovered this on Saturday when, just a few hours after the Raiders released receiver Antonio Brown, the Patriots signed Brown to a one-year, $15 million deal with a $9 million signing bonus.
Everybody who thought about this saw it coming, and its name could be Randy Moss all over again. Of course, we’re referring to New England trading a fourth-round pick to the Raiders for Moss’ services in April 2007. Moss had been a relatively unproductive malingerer in Oakland for two seasons after the Vikings traded him to Oakland in 2005. And even in his salad days in Minnesota, Moss could be a Grade-A pain in the butt.
But when he got word of the Patriot Way … well, all of a sudden, Moss became the NFL’s most dominant receiver. Moss set the single-season record with 23 touchdown receptions in the 2007 regular season, adding another in Super Bowl XLII — which the Patriots lost to end their potentially perfect season. But in a four-year stretch, Moss caught 259 passes for 3,904 yards and 50 touchdowns for the Patriots, firmly establishing himself, at least in Peak Value terms, as the greatest receiver in franchise history.
Here’s the rub: In the modern version of the Patriots’ offense, Brown could be just as valuable as Moss ever was.
We can (and will) talk until we’re blue in the face about the machinations required to make this happen. Did Brown knowingly act up after the Steelers traded him to get the Raiders to release him and control his own destiny? Quite possibly. Do the Raiders have a tampering case if Drew Rosenhaus, Brown’s agent, advised his client to blow up the relationship with the knowledge that the Patriots would pick up the pieces? That will certainly be examined.
And is Brown capable of molding himself into a guy who will go with the culture, as opposed to the problem he could be in Pittsburgh and was nothing else but in Oakland? We can only wait and see. But from a pure football perspective, it’s hard to imagine a better marriage of scheme and player, and a greater need more completely filled than the move for Brown into an offense now without Rob Gronkowski and hoping that Josh Gordon can keep his life together.
From a pure football perspective, the combination of Brown, Gordon and Julian Edelman makes this offense nearly impossible to defend, especially when you factor in the power running game the Patriots perfected in the second half of last season and rode all the way to their sixth Super Bowl title. This is an offense that has always relied heavily on the ability of its receivers to run option routes — to use a defender’s leverage against him to succeed through the route adjustments.
There are few who have done this better than Brown throughout his career, as he learned to extend plays during Ben Roethlisberger’s scramble drills. And the slot plays created off play action in this offense? Brady hasn’t had a vertical target with Brown’s potential since Moss. We’re about to find out if the relative lack of deep throws in New England’s offense had more to do with a lack of reliable downfield options than anything having to do with Brady’s functional velocity.
Let’s remember that Brown’s total receiving statistics from his fifth through his ninth NFL seasons top any other receiver in league history in that specific timeline — he’s the best ever in targets (859), receptions (576) and receiving yards (7,646). He’s fourth in that spectrum with 59 touchdowns, behind only Jerry Rice, Terrell Owens and Marvin Harrison, and he was blazing a trail to the Hall of Fame before everything got weird. This isn’t a decent addition for the Patriots — this is a catastrophe for the rest of the NFL if it all works out, especially if Josh Gordon is on the field at the same time through the entire season.
That’s a whole lot of “if,” but it’s easy to see why the Patriots are taking these shots, and why Brown finds this option so appealing.
So … how does Brown fit into this offense based on his skill set? Let’s take a look.
Brown ended his Steelers career with a bang, catching 14 passes on 19 targets for 185 yards and two touchdowns in Week 16 against the Saints. This 3-yard touchdown against New Orleans shows how Brown can turn a pick play in a compressed space into a big valley for an easy score. Cornerbacks Marshon Lattimore and P.J. Williams don’t stand a chance against Brown’s elevated awareness of how to create space.
Remember when we were talking about Brown’s ability to adjust to Roethlisberger’s scramble drills? Here, safety Von Bell has to deal with Brown’s fade route that turned back inside when Brown saw Roethlisberger rolling to his right. Immediately, Brown cut back inside and ran a brilliant deep curl under Bell’s coverage. Imagine this ability in a three-receiver option combination, and your head might explode.
This 17-yard touchdown against the Patriots in Week 15 shows just how unpleasant life can be when you’re covering Brown on a switch release — basically, when two receivers cross quickly off the line of scrimmage and run their routes against defenders who have to adjust to receivers they didn’t expect.
Here, receiver James Washington takes cornerback Stephon Gilmore inside on the crosser while safety Duron Harmon has to deal with Brown up the seam. Harmon is an excellent player, but this is a mismatch from the pre-snap phase. Now, imagine Brown and Josh Gordon running switches together. Your head may have just exploded again.
Brown has long been recognized as perhaps the best route runner in the game, and one of the more underrated aspects of this talent is how he’s able to absolutely destroy cornerbacks with leverage into his cuts — master classes in how to “sink” into routes. In this 28-yard touchdown against the Chargers in Week 13, watch how he extends cornerback Michael Davis all over the field. Davis opens up his hips because he thinks Brown is going outside, Brown sees that and works his way inside after selling the outside fake. Davis does a credible job of recovering, but then, Brown breaks away from Davis and safety Adrian Phillips with another pretty cut to the goalpost.
Brown is just as good as he’s ever been — he turned 31 in July — and there’s no physical drop-off evident, other than the foot injuries he suffered in an offseason cryotherapy incident. As long as he keeps his head in the game, Brown is the very definition of a franchise player — the best in the business at what he does, with the ability to make all around him better at what they do.
And if this was all planned … well, the Patriots just hoodwinked the rest of the NFL. Again. We’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018.
