Eagles GM Howie Roseman<\/a> finally acknowledged that Brown wanted a fresh start elsewhere.<\/p>\nWhen did Brown know that?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a specific moment,\u201d Brown said to Taylor. \u201cI would say just I think at the end of the season, I just realized that I felt like my time was up.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Brown was a little short on details about why he wanted to move on, this is the first time he has admitted it publicly. Brown spent four seasons in Philadelphia, had over 5,000 receiving yards and won a Super Bowl. He\u2019s one of the greatest receivers in franchise history.<\/p>\n
Brown said he and his agent spoke about his future after the 2025 season but then he got out of the way and let his agent do his job. Eventually, that resulted in a trade to New England.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill processing it. Still processing it,\u201d Brown said about his split from Philly. \u201cI honestly took this time this week to really grieve and process my emotions around it. I\u2019m going to miss this place. I\u2019m going to miss teammates, miss the environment. That\u2019s what I did. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve been focused on all week.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brown was asked about his arrival to Philadelphia in a 2022 trade and the excitement that surrounded it. Part of that excitement was the chance to play with Jalen Hurts, whom he considered a best friend back then.<\/p>\n
Since then, the relationship dynamic between Hurts and Brown clearly changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot as close as we once were,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnd I believe that\u2019s fine. There\u2019s no bad blood. There\u2019s actually still a lot of love. I love him. I love him to death. I want him to succeed and accomplish all the things that he wants to accomplish. I didn\u2019t truly understand why our friendship became center of everybody\u2019s attention when it came to football because, looking back on it, we haven\u2019t been as close as we were a couple years now. But that didn\u2019t stop anything. We still competed, we still pushed each other, we still led the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt (was) just kind of strange, people just got so fixated on the relationship and wanted to talk about \u2014 maybe from the history of this place. But that wasn\u2019t what this was. I\u2019m going to say it to you, I\u2019m going to say it on camera: I got nothing but love for him. I want him to do well and accomplish everything that his heart desires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last week at OTAs, Hurts was asked about Brown and said the two were \u201creally good,\u201d while also speaking about their accomplishments in the past tense.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing happened. Nothing happened,\u201d Brown said. \u201cPeople just grow apart. Nothing happened between me and him or our families or wives or anything. Nothing like that ever happened. But life happens. You just look up sometimes and you just find yourself drifting away. And that\u2019s fine. I think both parties accepted that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Brown talked about the 2025 season and talked about the expectations on the team after winning Super Bowl LIX. He was asked how he handled those moments and admitted that it was \u201cwrong\u201d to publicly air his frustrations on social media.<\/p>\n
But Brown also let it be known that his comments in the media were purposeful. It was a strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew if I say something in the media, I know it\u2019s going to propel us to work on it because now everybody is talking about it,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Are we going to fix it or not?\u2019 We can\u2019t keep saying it. We can\u2019t keep saying it\u2019s a standard, it\u2019s a standard and we\u2019re not trying to truly get better. Not saying that we weren\u2019t but I know if you say what you need to say in the media, which won\u2019t do that anymore, but it gives everything legs and legs to push and to push everybody to better. Because pressure isn\u2019t always a bad thing. It can also be a good thing too.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for his future, Brown seemed extremely happy to land with the Patriots. He grew up as a fan of the Pats. The interview with Taylor was even done in front of a giant Patriots rug that Brown has had in his house long before this trade was thought of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A.J. Brown has finally broken his silence. Speaking for the first time publicly this offseason, Brown answered questions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[169200,1239,99],"class_list":["post-680319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-eagles-blog","tag-philadelphia-eagles","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}