AJ Brown cut through the crowd of reporters gathered around his locker room at the NovaCare Complex on Wednesday afternoon and pushed his chair out of the way.
“My goodness!” said Brown. “Okay, let me get comfortable.”
Then he really broke his silence.
But before he did that, Brown apologized to the team on Wednesday morning.
“I apologized to my teammates today because they don’t have to answer questions on my behalf,” Brown said. “I am a man. I can speak for myself.”
The Eagles' 26-year-old star receiver had declined interview requests since Christmas Day after the Giants game. In a nearly 13-minute interview Wednesday, Brown explained, among other things, his silence, his frustration over Sunday's fourth-quarter loss, why he apologized to his teammates and his relationship with Nick Sirianni.
“Honestly, the reason I didn’t talk to the media after the game was because I didn’t want to be negative,” Brown said. “I had already come to the mindset that we're going through a difficult time, and personally, being the person that I am, I just know that I just have to get back to work. I can not help it. Like I said after the (Giants) game, the way I grew up, if I didn't have anything nice to say, I won't say anything at all.
“I will not mix the negative with the negative so that you can write more negative things. You saw the game too, so you already know. That's why I thought: I can't say anything more about it. I'm not trying to make it worse than it is. And on top of that, whatever I do, whatever I say, whatever I do, I'm labeled a monster. Honest. And frankly, the opposite is true.”
After a 3rd-and-19 screen attempt failed in the fourth quarter of Sunday's 35-31 loss to the Cardinals, Brown was caught on a FOX camera shaking his head in frustration.
Without hearing from Brown himself, there have been many theories about this frustration. A lot of it revolved around the assumption that he was unhappy with the play calling or the lack of targets he saw in that series and towards the end of the game. Brown made a different statement Wednesday, saying he was upset because DeVonta Smith rolled his ankle on the play. Brown said he knew some people wouldn't believe that explanation, but he also said he didn't care.
“You could see my frustration on the field,” Brown said. “It wasn’t about the play calling, it wasn’t about none of that. It was about my husband getting beaten up. We're going to, I'm going to need Smitty to move forward. But that’s it.”
Brown doesn't understand why his frustration is on display. He said every player in the locker room was frustrated. The Eagles (11-5) have lost four of their last five games and have risen from a potential No. 1 seed to a likely playoff seed as a wild-card team.
This isn't the first time Brown has felt vilified for the way he expresses his feelings.
“Just because I shake my head? “I show emotion?” Brown said. “You can see that everyone in the stadium has bad body language. You are frustrated. And that's why I wanted to clarify that because it's not about me. We are all frustrated. I wanted to clarify this.”
And Brown also wanted to clear up any talk about him and head coach Nick Sirianni. Brown said Wednesday that he and the head coach have a strong relationship.
Sirianni has publicly and privately defended Brown as a player and teammate in recent weeks.
“People say I fight with Nick. I’m not mad at Nick,” Brown said. “I'm not angry with anyone. We have a great relationship. I have a lot of respect for Nick because he stands up for us when it comes to us.”
Brown also gave an example. According to Brown, Sirianni tried to cover for his players by saying that a play call late in the Seattle game was due to the Eagles trying to interfere with a defensive pass. Brown said that wasn't the case and that the Eagles' receivers were involved in the game on a freelance basis. “He really looked like an idiot to us,” Brown said.
Brown doesn't like being labeled a diva. He admitted on Wednesday – just like he did last season – that he always wants football. He said if he gets it 105 times, he'll want it 106 times.
But he also said that he doesn't demand the football during the game and even jokingly admitted that Smith was a squeaker wheel in that regard, but no one noticed.
“I don’t say anything during the game. I don’t ask for the ball,” Brown said. “But when a wide receiver says something, he’s considered a diva and wants the ball. Maybe I'll hold my teammates accountable. Like we're having these difficult conversations. But when a quarterback does it, no one says anything. But if a recipient says something, it's the end of the world. This is it and I can't control it. I know who I am and I try to push my teammates and I’m not going to change who I am and that’s it.”
The only thing Brown didn't deny on Wednesday is that he's frustrated.
Of course he is.
“Yes, because I want to win. I want to win,” Brown said. “And I’m trying to do everything in my power to win. I wake up before the sun rises and go home hours after the sun has set. That is our life. We dedicate our entire lives to this topic. But we are serious. It comes with frustration.”
And sometimes you just have to let it out.
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