By WFAN.com
Will the Antonio Brown trade prove to be a road map for disgruntled NFL players in the future?
Late Saturday night, the Steelers traded the seven-time Pro Bowl wide receiver to the Oakland Raiders for third- and fifth-round draft picks. Not only did Brown get his wish by leaving Pittsburgh, he was given a new three-year, $50.1 million contract -- amounting to an annual raise of $3.4 million. The deal includes $30.1 million in guaranteed money -- his previous contract had no remaining guaranteed pay.
At the start of their show Monday, WFAN's Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti discussed the magnitude of the Brown trade.
"He's upset the system," Esiason said. "There is no question that he absolutely won. Mr. Big Chest himself put the Steelers in a box. The Steelers cowered, they bent, and they broke.
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"I only say this from a player perspective -- for a Steeler fan and for the way this whole thing went down, I know a lot of them think that it stinks, and, yeah, it does stink -- but players very rarely ever get what they want in relation to something like this, a situation that developed in Pittsburgh like this. And the Steelers took one right on the chin, man."
Receiving the extra money makes it "a much bigger win for Antonio Brown and a win for the NFL players," Esiason added.
But Giannotti seemed skeptical that other players will follow the path of Brown, who reportedly got into a heated exchanged with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, skipped practices before the Steelers' season finale, was suspended for the game and then left the stadium at halftime.
"A lot of players seem to think that this is opening the door for them maybe to do something like this in the future, and I don't believe that that's going to happen," Giannotti said. "I think that this is a unique situation where you had a player who was not going to go back and play for that particular team and an organization could not, two years in a row, have something like this hanging over them."
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Last season, Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell ended up holding out the entire season rather than playing under the franchise tag.
"If they would've taken a hard-line stance here with Antonio Brown, the same thing would've happened. 'Is he showing up? Is he not showing up?'" Giannotti said. "I just don't think that in the future other players are going to get exactly what Antonio Brown got. The teams are going to bank on the fact that their leverage, as far as fining a guy because he's not showing up under contract and you're going to lose out on all this money that you would've had, is going to make them play the year but be unhappy.
"This was exceptionally unique what Antonio Brown pulled off, and I don't think you'll see much of it in the future."
