Here's Joe Starkey's thoughts.
Mike White, @mw_ste3lcity: What are your thoughts on Martavis Bryant?
Starkey: Well, when he’s not baking more than Rachael Ray, Mike, he is a game-changing receiver (in an unrelated note, I think, I just discovered that Martavis spellchecks to “Martinis”). He is a player of such rare quality, in fact, that he transforms the entire offense by his mere presence. Do you know of many 6-foot-4 receivers who run like that?
Bryant has 14 touchdown catches in 21 career games, not to mention a 17.3-yard average. That mark would have put him third in the league this season. As you probably know, he has applied for reinstatement and will be subject to a meeting with commissioner Roger Goodell (assuming Goodell is not booed to death in Houston) or his representative, along with a league medical advisor who will make a recommendation to Goodell.
The question on a lot of minds seems to be this: Would a clean Martavis be the No. 1 receiver who could make Antonio Brown expendable?
My answer: Be serious.
How can you trust a guy who already got himself suspended for a year? Besides which, I seriously doubt Bryant could be as consistently productive and electric as Brown. Not many could.
The narrative on Brown has become borderline unfathomable, by the way. You know when you make one of those Pros-Cons ledgers when considering a new job or a new school or some such thing?
The one on whether to keep Brown would read like this:
CON: Took inappropriate Facebook video
PRO: Won division with legendary play
CON: Sometimes pouts
PRO: Won a playoff game in first quarter
CON: Is concerned with numbers
PRO: Puts up historically significant numbers
CON: Twerked in end zone
PRO: Found end zone 14 times
CON: Makes Ben mad
PRO: Turns 5-yard Ben passes into TDs
The game-changer in the Cons column would be if Brown did, in fact, intentionally run the wrong routes — even just once — in the AFC title game. My Post-Gazette colleague Ron Cook, in his provocative column Sunday, suggested it might have happened.
If that is proven true, then it should be an A-1 story under the headline: “Brown sabotaged Steelers in AFC championship,” and Brown should immediately be traded. That is a fireable offense.
It’s one thing to run the wrong routes because you’re not focused (and I’m sure Brown has done that). It’s quite another to sabotage your team by intentionally running the wrong routes in a conference championship game (I refuse to believe that happened).
In the meantime, I’m sticking with the Pros and putting Brown maybe third on the team’s Most Selfish Player List (behind guys who regularly get suspended) and second or third on Most Dramatic Player List — definitely behind the quarterback, who, as you might have heard, is thinking about retiring. Ben Roethlisberger also ripped the coach in public when the Steelers won to improve to 4-1.
You know, it’s funny: Tom Brady sets the tone in New England by basically demanding that the coach reprimand him like everyone else. Here, the quarterback reprimands the coach!