LOS ANGELES (KNX) — If you didn't see it Sunday, Antonio Brown of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took off his jersey, shoulder pads and undershirt, cut through the endzone and left Tampa Bay's game against the New York Jets — in the middle of the game.
Though Brown has had a history recently of erratic behavior, some wonder if his actions could be tied to sports-related head injuries.
A few years ago the wide receiver took a nasty hit to the head in a game while he was on the Steelers. Doctor Armin Hoes, a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist and executive director of the Sports Psyh MDs nonprofit, spoke with KNX In Depth to analyze his behavior.
“There’s a lot of armchair diagnosis going on…I’m not even going to join that narrative because it’s really impossible to say until you’ve been able to sit down and do a real, authentic evaluation,” Hoes said.
“But what we can say is that there’s been a pattern over what seems like years, of behavior that certainly doesn’t seem to be in his best interest. Stuff that seems to be dysfunctional.”
Speaking hypothetically, Hoes said it’s possible to tell the difference between an eccentric person and true, physical issues leading to the behavior.
“In the case of brain injury there’s certainly advanced testing that can be one to determine if there’s potentially some early signs of traumatic brain injury and the chronic effects of that,” Hoes said.
“The diagnosis specifically of CTE…that’s a very difficult diagnosis to make. We really don’t have, at this stage, enough concrete research to say for sure but given his history he certainly would be at higher risk for something like that.”
While Hoes wouldn’t talk specifically about what he thinks of Brown’s health, he did say that any sort of chronic brain injury could lead to other issues like psychiatric symptoms — like erratic behavior.
“That could be from a neurological injury…or it could be from an undiagnosed primary mental illness,” he said. “That’s the thing, it would be so important for this person to sit down with a professional just to see what we find.”
As of Monday night, the Buccaneers have not removed Brown from the roster, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter, but the team is indeed discussing how to move forward following his behavior Sunday night.
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