The therapy must be working.
Antonio Brown has been making rounds offering apologies for his bad behavior, offering up mea culpas to the NFL, his girlfriend and, well, pretty much the world in general.
Thursday morning, he made a surprising appearance on 93.7 The Fan and said he was thankful for his time with the Steelers.
"I apologize to those guys for the distractions, for the unwanted attention I probably caused those guys," Brown said. "Obviously you want to clear out any baggage or disrespect or unintended attention that was brought onto the organization. These guys gave me an opportunity when I was 21 years old and I'm forever grateful for those guys.
"To have the opportunity to not only play with those guys, but to be in so many major moments. We've been through so much, so I am forever grateful and indebted to the Steelers organization, Mr. (Art) Rooney, Mike Tomlin, Kevin Colbert, Ben Roethlisberger."
Of course, Brown also blew that opportunity the Steelers gave him by acting out and demanding a trade a year ago. Since then, Brown has spent time with the Raiders and Patriots and been through a number of high-profile problems and legal issues.
The latest, an arrest for felony burglary and battery for his involvement in an incident with a moving truck at his home in the Miami area.
A judge at that time, among other things, ordered Brown to begin receiving mental health therapy.
"Everyone got an agenda from what they want to get from me or what they can make off me so it's good to be around and talk to people that don’t have no agenda, that can just support your mental health and listen to you," Brown said.
It's obviously caused him to think about many of his past transgressions and behavior.
Part of Brown's slash-and-burn performance to force his way out of Pittsburgh was to go after Roethlisberger, something he did very strongly and continued to do throughout the better part of the last year.
He said the entire issue stemmed from what he felt was a lack of respect.
"I just think, man, people got to show more respect and be more considerate to others, and I got to learn not to let people who come at me negative (to) react, because I’m a leader. Whatever I do is going to be magnified times 10," Brown said.
Brown's reference to respect might have come from the fact he was not named team MVP in 2018, which seemed to touch off his downward spiral. He and Roethlisberger reportedly had issues at practice in the week leading up to the team's regular season finale. A day later, JuJu Smith-Schuster was named team MVP and Brown skipped the team's final two days of practice in preparation for the regular season finale against the Bengals.
Tomlin benched him for that game. Brown and Smith-Schuster have traded some barbs on social media -- mostly from Brown -- but Smith-Schuster reached out to Brown last week saying he'd like to talk.
“I have nothing against JuJu Smith-Schuster," Brown said. "Why would I? I’m who he want to be, I’m who he want to be.”
