Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown called into a sports radio show Friday afternoon to address rumors about his future with the team.
“I have no problem. I want to be here, it’s as simple as that,” Brown told Philadelphia radio station 94WIP. “I love where I’m at, it’s as simple as that. Next question.”
He also called rumors of friction between himself and quarterback Jalen Hurts “total B.S.”
“I’m not going to get into me and his relationship on the air. But it’s total B.S., you know what I’m saying?” he said. “It wasn’t a problem when I was on my six-game streak. They wasn’t talking about that then, so they only started talking about that when we started losing. Of course, you see friction from everybody, from the coaches, the players and from everybody. So there you go.”
Brown was referring to his streak of 125-plus receiving yards in six straight games, an NFL record. The Eagles started the season 10-1 but collapsed down the stretch, losing six of their final seven games.
Brown called into the radio station Friday afternoon because he was unhappy with reporting about him, calling it “personal” and saying that negativity was a reason he didn’t speak to the media during stretches last season.
“You see what the media’s doing right now, this past whole month. You wonder why I’m not talking to them,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to them because no matter what I say, you guys are going to make a story and pinpoint it however you want to pinpoint it.”
Brown said he believes he and his teammates gave the media “the answers” after the Eagles’ collapse, but “people just didn’t want to accept the answers.”
“Really, I’m just taking up for my teammates,” he said, “because half of the rumors, it really be crazy.”
“You see what the media’s doing right now, this past whole month. You wonder why I’m not talking to them. I don’t want to talk to them because no matter what I say you guys are going to make a story and pinpoint it however you want to pinpoint it.”
A.J. Brown
During the radio interview, Brown reiterated what he had said during the season, that when he appeared upset on the sideline, it wasn’t because he was upset about his targets. Instead, he often was holding his teammates accountable as a leader on the team. He also said the Eagles’ lackluster play as it stumbled down the stretch fell on the players and was not due to coaching, and that the team wasn’t playing as well during its 10-1 start as its record made it appear.
“I’m the guy who’s going to look in the mirror and go challenge everybody else. It was the players not executing, and that’s what happened,” Brown said. “If you look back closely, [WIP host] Ike [Reese] said it a few seconds ago that we were playing like the best team in the league. We wasn’t. We may have had the best record in the league, but we wasn’t playing like the best team in the league. It was like that all year. We were scratching away getting wins. And so, when stuff [began] to really unravel … and stuff started to not go as planned, then you saw what was happening. It was a domino effect, and we was trying to stop the bleeding and everything was going too fast at that point.”
He ended the interview by saying, “I just want to let Philly know I love ’em, and everybody who’s making those rumors, hey man, you need to find another job.”
Brown, who joined the Eagles in a 2022 draft-night trade with the Tennessee Titans, finished his second season in Philadelphia with a career-best 106 catches for 1,456 yards and seven touchdowns. He has three years left on the four-year, $100 million contract extension he signed in 2022.
Source: www.espn.com