Joe Kinsey
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Monday Morning QB’s Albert Breer reports that Antonio Brown could earn up to $2.5 million from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers if he plays all nine remaining games and the team wins the Super Bowl. Brown would earn $1.75 million of it by making the playoffs and winning a ring with Tom Brady. Brown is expected to make his Tampa debut November 8 against the Saints.
Here’s how the incentive package breaks down according to Breer:
Heading into Week 8 of the NFL season, Tampa has an 80% probability of making the playoffs, so now it just comes down to how many catches, yards, and touchdowns AB collects during the playoff push. Will there be enough balls to go around for AB to cash his incentives? Keep in mind Mike Evans and Chris Godwin lead the team with 25 catches each through seven games. And don’t sleep on the fact Rob Gronkowski is starting to receive more targets — eight in back-to-back games.
This appears to be a team-friendly deal, but it gets Brown back into the league and at 32 he’s pretty much a dinosaur so he has to take what he can get at this point. Guys over 32 who are still kicking around the NFL: Larry Fitzgerald, Danny Amendola, Ted Ginn Jr., Julian Edelman, Emmanuel Sanders, DeSean Jackson, A.J. Green and Golden Tate. That’s it.
Peter King asked Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians why he’d bring in Brown.
“Injuries,” Arians said. “I mean, we got two Pro Bowl receivers [Mike Evans, Chris Godwin]. We went to Chicago with none of them, really. They were hurt. And here’s a guy that’s a Pro Bowl type player . . . We’re on the hook for nothing in this deal. He screws up one time, he’s gone. I don’t think he will because he wants to play.”
There you go. Antonio Brown is an insurance policy who is 99% guaranteed to cash in unless the team wins the Super Bowl.
So much for that comment Arians made in the pre-season about how AB has no chance of being on the Bucs. I would have preferred they just paid AB most of these incentives up front, give him a great bonus for getting to and winning the Super Bowl and not make his pay incentive-laden. This way, AB won’t act like a heroine addict with his statistics. He could just fit in where ne needs to and make a great play or two every week as needed.