Bruce Arians’ remarks about Antonio Brown suggest he has no interest in trading for his former wide receiver - ‘Too much diva’

If the Pittsburgh Steelers are looking to move Antonio Brown via trade this offseason, it would appear they can take the Tampa Bay Buccaneers off the list of interested teams. Despite having having worked with Brown before, or perhaps in part because of it, Bruce Arians sounded like a man who had no interest in bringing his former receiver to Tampa Bay now he is the new head coach of the Buccaneers.

Speaking with Adam Schefter of ESPN on his podcast, the Steelers former offensive coordinator painted a rather unflattering picture of Brown’s problems in Pittsburgh.

“From afar, there’s too much miscommunication, too much ... diva. I’ve heard so many stories. I like Antonio, he plays as hard as anybody on Sunday and he practices hard. He’s just gotta make better decisions off the field, be on time, do some of those little things.”

While still acknowledging that AB was really not a problem in his time with the Steelers.

“He was the hardest working. He and Emmanuel Sanders, boy they went after it, because Mike Tomlin used to tell them, ‘Two dogs, one bone.’ At that time, we had Mike Wallace, Hines Ward, we had a pretty good room for one of them to get on the field and by the end of the season, they were both winning for us to go to the Super Bowl.”

Arians was the man in charge of the offense when Brown was drafted in 2010 and they spent two years together until he was let go at the end of the 2011 season. Although AB would only see 16 receptions for 167-yards in his rookie season, he would break out under Arians in his second season, recording 69 catches for 1,108-yards and the best yards per catch average of his career with 16.1-yards a reception.

That being said, even if Arians was interested in trading for AB, there is a chance the Steelers star receiver might have rejected him instead. In light of a post he made on Instagram back in June, it would appear that Brown still holds some resentment about the way he was viewed by both Arians and Mike Tomlin when he was first drafted.

Given how much it would seem he feels disrespected in Pittsburgh, it is hard to imagine Brown wanting to play for a coach who once believed he was nothing more than a special teams player who was not smart enough to learn the offense.