Antonio Brown Now Plans To Meet With Steelers Owner

Update:

Ian Rapoport now reports that Antonio Brown will now meet with Steelers owner Art Rooney II as a sign of respect.

---

Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Steelers owner Art Rooney II is in Florida was hoping to meet with disgruntled WR Antonio Brown to clear the air.

However, Rapoport says that Brown has no plans to meet with Rooney.

Rapoport expects talks regarding Brown’s future with the Steelers to ramp up at the Combine in Indianapolis. 

Earlier in the week, Brown thanked Steelers’ fans on his Twitter account while adding “time to move on and forward #NewDemands.”

Reports later confirmed that Brown reiterated his trade demands to the Steelers. 

Brown has been the subject of trade rumors since he was benched for Week 17’s game after an incident that occurred during practice. 

Pittsburgh would incur a $21 million cap hit by trading Brown, which is typically too prohibitive for a team to take on. However, reports have said Pittsburgh believes they can easily offset the cap hit.

Brown is owed a $2.5 million roster bonus on the third day of the league year, which could work as a deadline of sorts for the Steelers to trade him.

Brown, 30, is a former sixth-round pick of the Steelers back in 2010. He’s currently in the third year of his five-year, $72.71 million contract that included a $19 million signing bonus and stands to make base salaries of $12.625 million and $11.3 million over the next two years of the agreement.

Trading Brown would be really tough for the Steelers, considering that they would take a $21.12 million cap hit by moving him before June 1. After that, the dead money hit drops to $7.04 million with the remainder being carried on their 2020 salary cap.

In 2018, Brown appeared in 15 games for the Steelers and caught 104 passes for 1,297 yards and 15 touchdowns.

We’ll have more regarding Brown and the Steelers as the news is available.