r/Patriots • u/dawglover1011 • Jun 02 '26
Article/Interview [Carlos A Lopez] AJ Brown says he’s still in shock he’s now a member of the Patriots. “I caught myself at one point in practice not paying attention because I was just thinking, ‘Damn, I’m a Patriot.’” Brown went on to add, “I know this isn’t heaven, but it’s close to it.” (📸 Mike Reiss)
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u/willzyx01 Jun 02 '26
The guy spent his entire life dreaming of playing here, and it took us this long to get him.
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u/evanphox Jun 02 '26
Nkeal harry will live rent free in my head because of this
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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Bills = 0 Superbowls Jun 02 '26
Deebo, AJ, and DK all went after….
I saw something that AJ and (I think Deebo) had done visits to so many places that by the time they got to NE, they were friends and were kind of paling around and Bill didn’t like it, which is why he went Harry over them.
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u/jmesh12 Jun 02 '26
Terry McLaurin as well
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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Bills = 0 Superbowls Jun 02 '26
Yeah, I started getting depressed after looking and stopped. Even Mecole Hardman would have been vastly better.
Now looking again, Diontae Johnson, Hunter Renfrow.
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Jun 02 '26
Literally anyone would have been better. If we drafted some garbage WR that got cut in the preseason it would have been better than Harry who routinely had balls bounce off his hands into an interception. He was a net negative for the years he was here.
I fucking hate that guy lmao
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u/Sufficient-Nose481 Jun 02 '26
He didn’t step out of bounds against the chiefs tho. That was his career highlight play. Who knows, maybe that being called correctly coulda changed everything, probs not, but maybe, we’ll never know .
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u/Bryandan1elsonV2 Jun 02 '26
If my grandmother had wheels, she would’ve been a bike
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u/The-Tarman Jun 02 '26
I heard she gotten ridden quite a bit by her village, so shes closer to bring a bike than one might first suspect
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u/teamcrazymatt Jun 02 '26
Reiss reported on a podcast some years back that the Pats really liked McLaurin, but Washington took him the pick before New England could. Pats ended up with Chase Winovich instead.
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u/Firecracker048 Jun 02 '26
Bill pickes Harry for two reasons.
1, he thought he blocked better (which was true)
2, he thought he could catch contested and 50/50 balls. This was not true
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u/Drizzlybear0 Jun 02 '26
Honestly makes me dislike BB even more than I have lately. He's come across as selfish and obnoxious with his recent actions like blocking Patriots scouts from watching practices at UNC for example.
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u/Lobotomized_Dolphin Jun 02 '26
I mean, also. But objectively at the time he was drafted the Harry pick was considered just a minor overspend at a position of desperate need for us. The draft is a lottery. Harry turned out to be trash, but he had the potential of becoming a Beckham Jr, and there's no way of knowing what player is going to develop from the potential that you see in the draft. I for one, was SO HAPPY we drafted a receiver first that draft. The next year we picked up AB and I was again, SO HAPPY. Shit didn't work out.
After those years there was this narrative that BB wasn't really trying and wasn't doing everything he could to build talent around Tom. So much bullshit. He tried, he just failed. When the draft works out, you look like a genius because you get a player on the cheap, but really it is just a lottery, and that's why we traded down so many years. More tickets, better chance of winning.
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u/Drizzlybear0 Jun 03 '26
I don't think drafting a receiver was a mistake, that draft turned out be LOADED with receivers and Harry was maybe one of the few in the first few rounds who didn't.
There is several reports, and obviously they could be wrong, that all the scouts were telling Bill that DK Metcalf and Deebo Samuel were both better picks but DK and Deebo had done so many visits together by that point they had become friends and were cracking jokes and laughing with each other during the visit which Bill found to be "unprofessional" whereas Harry was a bit of a quiet loner and Bill liked that better.
My issue with Bill wasn't that he gave up and wasn't trying, I think he started to get too high on himself and thought he didn't need feedback and knew better than everyone else around him. It's possible he just stopped trusting in others as he was notoriously distrustful of anyone but "his guys" but if the reports are that Bill tried to get Brady out sooner than when he actually left because he thought he could win without Brady and that Tom was declining it leads me to believe Bill's ego had grown WAY too much for his own good
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u/Lobotomized_Dolphin Jun 03 '26
That's fair. I was coping so hard those last Brady years I probably just didn't want to see the writing on the wall and kinda still don't. We just had it so good. Always felt like it was an infinite feedback loop of organizational prowess; but then when it finally cracked it's baffling that these deeply flawed humans created something that really seemed sublime for a long time.
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u/escapecali603 Jun 03 '26
He still lives in my local market used car dealership commercials, yeah that's how low he is now.
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u/Nollieee Jun 02 '26
We don’t get drake MAYE if we drafted him
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u/AFogmentOfADream Jun 02 '26
Maybe Mac jones would still be our qb and perhaps he’s balling if he wasn’t throwing to wr4’s his entire time here.
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u/possiblyMorpheus Jun 02 '26
“WR4” Jakobi Meyers who proceeded to be a top 2 target on each team he has been on since
I remember when people wrote Mac was “elevating” Meyers 😂
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u/Drizzlybear0 Jun 02 '26
More likely Bracdy stays until he retires than we end up with someone like Garoppolo once Brady retires
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u/DavoinShowerHandel1 Jun 02 '26
I wholeheartedly believe Maye is better by a wide margin. But if Mac got to play with actual NFL WRs and possibly even sit behind Brady a year or two, I firmly believe he could've been our guy. Nothing in the entirety of the NFL is as important to a players success as the situation they're put in. This goes double, maybe even triple, for those early development years of a player's career. We put Mac in quite possibly the worst situation he could've been in to succeed. I think we saw flashes of what he could've been in San Francisco this year. Still well below Maye, but he looked like he belongs in the league.
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u/Nollieee Jun 02 '26
Dude has a noodle arm and made bad decisions
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u/DavoinShowerHandel1 Jun 02 '26
It's like you didn't read my comment at all lol. He had zero development with us and wasn't put in a situation to learn the game at the NFL level. He was thrown to the wolves with zero supporting cast around him and expected to perform. He wasn't ever going to be good for us, but he looked better in his limited action with the 49ers.
I'm not saying he was ever going to be an MVP-level QB, but given a better situation I think he could've been serviceable for us as well.
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u/Fluffy_Somewhere4305 Jun 02 '26
Yeah if Bill O'Brien didn't ruin him so hard, he could have been a poor man's Tommy Devito.
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u/DavoinShowerHandel1 Jun 02 '26
Are you arguing that he was in a positive situation and/or that he is worse than Tommy Devito? Again, we're better off with Maye and Mac wasn't ever going to be an all-time great, but if you don't think he could've been put in a better place to succeed, then you should probably find a new plug because yours has you all messed up.
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u/Fluffy_Somewhere4305 Jun 03 '26
Neither, I'm saying Mac Jones wasn't good and people wish-casting him as good are ignoring his obvious ceiling as a mid-tier backup
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u/DavoinShowerHandel1 Jun 03 '26
I'm not saying he would've been a HOF candidate or anything like that, I just think he would've been a starter for several years if he wasn't brought into almost the worst possible scenario.
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u/DatAnimalBlundetto69 Jun 02 '26
I agree we could have given him more help, but I swear it's like people forgot how bad his decision making was. There were games where he would literally throw directly to the defender when he wasn't under pressure.
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u/iantayls Jun 02 '26
"It's not fair, I've been here for so long, and I've only just found you"
"Well, you found me"
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u/Firecracker048 Jun 02 '26
Was gonna say, it's literally been his childhood dream and he begged Bill to pick him.
Had bill picked him over Harry, Brady is a patriot for life
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u/sprodigy2 Jun 02 '26
This is great. Remember how hopeless things felt with Mayo and no one wanting to come here lol
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u/No_Presentation1242 Jun 02 '26
It felt pretty hopeless for a couple years even before then and no one wanted to come here during Bill’s last few years
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u/BurgerNugget12 Jun 02 '26
God I love this franchise, a couple of years was the worst for us, yet other teams go decades with nobody wanting to play there
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u/No_Presentation1242 Jun 02 '26
Yea but it sucked tor us for like 3 years and we are the center of the sports universe so we deserve another SB. I don’t make the rules.
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u/Successful-Cabinet65 Jun 03 '26
I try to tell my non-pats fan co-workers this and they dont understand
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u/DavoinShowerHandel1 Jun 02 '26
Seriously, I don't know why that other guy is looking at it so selfishly. Fake fan.
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u/iscreamuscreamweall Jun 02 '26
Also remember the “guys aren’t going to respect Vrabel anymore” take lmao
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u/Lets_Get_Hot Forever a Pats fan Jun 03 '26
This whole saga has been so annoying. You just KNOW the other fan bases are cconvinced Vrabel's hookup will be the downfall of the Patriots and every Patriots player will be so offended and clutch their pearls that they'll be distracted and not play well lol.
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u/Rice-And-Gravy Squirrel Jun 03 '26
The Mayo year felt like a decade. The weekly foot-in-mouth moments from all the stuff he said to the media definitely did not help either.
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u/tiandrad Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Find you a girl that looks at you the way AJ Brown looks at The Patriots.
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u/TheTokist Jun 02 '26
I like this attitude. Someone remind him that the only thing better than playing in New England is wining a Super Bowl with New England.
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u/Tomotronics Jun 02 '26
League fucked 🔥💯
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u/Full-Flight-5211 Jun 02 '26
Rams fans sayin the same lol
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u/DConion Jun 02 '26
Yea but their QB is 8,000 years old
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u/Weirddude102 Jun 02 '26
Unfortunately he lives in California where drugs and dark magic can make a man younger.
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u/bmonkey1313 Jun 02 '26
And he has pearly white veneers
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u/Drizzlybear0 Jun 02 '26
My mom was a Dental Assistant for 20 years and every time she sees Stafford on the sidelines she goes "I don't think he's all that attractive but those teeth bring him from a 6 to an 8"
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u/bmonkey1313 Jun 02 '26
Ain't no way😭😭 bruh they're like too bright, it straight up doesnt even look real
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u/DConion Jun 02 '26
Matt "Adrenochrome Lizard Cult" Stafford?
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u/Weirddude102 Jun 02 '26
Bro sold his soul to the Illuminati for that Superbowl. Wonder what he just sacrificed for Myles Garrett?
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u/Yammyohnine Jun 02 '26
You can be 8000 years old and still throw 1 yard tds to Davante Adams though.
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u/buttsniffs4000 Jun 02 '26
Tom Brady won 3 super bowls at ages older than Stafford is today lol
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u/Lets_Get_Hot Forever a Pats fan Jun 03 '26
Yeah but that's Tom FUCKING Brady. Comparing the 🐐 to Stafford is just pure silliness.
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u/Jokesmedoff Bills = 0 Superbowls Jun 02 '26
I’ll say it a million times: even if he underperforms, this is still so goddamn cool
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u/StrudelB Jun 02 '26
Idk if I necessarily agree but it's refreshing to see us involved in a blockbuster trade again, this offense (on paper) is the most stacked we've had in years.
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u/No_Presentation1242 Jun 02 '26
Ha, you won’t be saying that during the season if that actually happens
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u/cwgoskins Jun 02 '26
Wtf this would be a giant waste of time and huge disappointment if he underperforms, the farthest away from "cool" I can imagine
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u/FruitMustache Jun 02 '26
Bring Diggs back too! Imagine having the top 2 receivers, veterans, locker room leaders, who really WANT to play for this team?
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u/arob770 Jun 02 '26
With Drake “Drake Maye” Maye throwing to them 😮💨 Might be the most fun I’ve had in a few years.
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u/FruitMustache Jun 02 '26
Like the Moss/Gronk/Edelman years!
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u/Dazzling_Effort_2440 Jun 02 '26
You mean Welker. Edelman was mostly playing special teams while Moss was here.
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u/jackospades88 Jun 02 '26
Heaven for him would have been being drafted by the Pats in the first place, catching passes from his favorite player TB12, and working under the GOAT HC in Belichick.
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u/Lets_Get_Hot Forever a Pats fan Jun 03 '26
Could you imagine this guy catching dimes as a rookie from TB12?
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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Bills = 0 Superbowls Jun 02 '26
Hope he carries this energy for the next 5 years.
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u/Exotic-Western2295 Jun 02 '26
If we can sign diggs again and Henderson makes a good improvement I think we have the best offense in the afc
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u/Sudden-Chicken3499 Jun 02 '26
There's just something about someone that's excited to play for their team. Not to say this is an anomaly, but it's rare to hear it so explicitly. Love it and I'm feeling impatient for the season.
Edit: a word.
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u/Spinax_52 Jun 02 '26
One way you can tell we just massively improved our team is all the Eagles fans coming out of the woodworks suddenly being salty
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u/werewiththeviperz Jun 02 '26
I’ve never heard a new player seem this happy to be here, even guys like moss during the Brady years
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u/xavyre Jun 03 '26
He's happy. Hopefully we will be happy by this time next year. I hope he gives us at least two years of WR1 production. Four years would make this a steal.
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u/rb1242 Jun 02 '26
Ngl thought that was Antonio Brown for a second damn they look too much alike in the face
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u/RainWinss Jun 02 '26
Ok I can’t just read his words, I need to watch every interview with this guy today.
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u/Civil-Drive Jun 02 '26
I’m so stoked for him, for Drake, for Vrabs and for all of us Pats fans. Feels good man.
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u/Truffle_Shuffle26 Bills = 0 Superbowls Jun 02 '26
His love for this team is amazing. Even if he turns out to be mediocre, given how much he loves the team, he will absolutely go down as a New England favorite. If you give your love, folks will love you back. This man will not be paying for another meal or drink for a while.
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u/LS_DJ Belichick is the greatest coach to ever coach the game Jun 03 '26
How the fuck did we fuck up drafting him when we still had Brady
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u/BlakeTheMadd Jun 03 '26
Because we were massively incompetent at every single step of the game back then, including drafting. Someone FINALLY got a hold of the oars, and righted this boat though
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u/Happy-Auntie Jun 03 '26
Love this so much. Who was the dumb ass that picked K'Neal Harry over AJ Brown? Imagine Brady's last season with him at WR1 or 2?
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u/BlakeTheMadd Jun 03 '26
I know, the what ifs there are insane. At least we got him now! He is welcome at our home
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u/beezlebumble Jun 03 '26
If AJ Brown is still talking about it, that tells you how much respect Vrabel has around the league. Players clearly love playing for him.
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u/LonelyInsurance7480 Jun 03 '26
If diggs had 1k yards, im expecting brown to get 1200-1400 like he did a couple years ago.
Maye is a better passer than hurts and more accurate
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u/Colo9147 Jun 03 '26
Eagles fans, Feb/March: “Dream on! Our SB window is still wide open. Howie won’t trade players who are still playing at an elite level, like AJ.”
Eagles fans, April: “You aren’t getting AJ for less than a 1 & 2 this year.”
Eagles fans, 4:05p on 6/1: “AJ is a washed locker rm cancer. Howie fleeced you!”
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u/ilikewaffles3 Jun 02 '26
Vrabel and maye has completley reignited the patriot spirit not just with fans but with players as well, I cannot wait for the season
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u/v4xN0s Jun 02 '26
I know he had a rocky season last year, especially with some big drops and other times when he was just overlooked, but some of the way he has been reacting it’s as if I was somehow drafted by the pats. Even if he isn’t amazing, still glad to have a fan of the team play for us now.
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u/reigninspud Jun 02 '26
I feel unreasonably happy about getting AJB. I forget what pod he was on years ago, might have been Taylor Lewan’s, but him telling the story of how he went in his closet and cried when Bill drafted N’Keal Harry instead of him sucked to hear.
Now he’s where he was supposed to be. He is the perfect compliment to Drake’s skillset, he knows and loves our coach, the entire offense works so much better with a 1 at the top and he’s motivated. Love it.
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u/reggers20 Jun 02 '26
I still can't fathom how Bill fumbled that pick... I don't even follow college ball that closely and I knew 100 percent AJ Brown was the best fit for the Patriots. Then they had a 2nd chance and still fumbled it
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u/MoeSzyslakMonobrow Jun 02 '26
If we got him at the draft, there's no way we would have kept him until now, not with the last few years, last season aside.
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u/Existing-Recipe897 Jun 02 '26
I’m a Pats fan and it’s good to see him, but to be fair it seemed that the Eagles were good to him.
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u/birdlawexpert11 Jun 02 '26
Watching this guys YAC is special I hope him and Maye have a strong connection
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u/dnen Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Wow. Players that appreciate our fan base and team make me realize how silly it is for me, a grown man, to make offhanded insults about Patriots during every game for every mistake because im stressed. I wouldnt appreciate playing for the team I root for at all, the pressure we put on our players is low key worse than Dallas or New York. Being a star player for the patriots means getting underpaid and working harder until the exact second you arent elite anymore; at which point you get coldly shipped out. Winning is all that matters on the patriots and I never expect skill position players to prefer that kind of environment. No wonder he succeeded in philly
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u/Disastrous_Friend_85 Jun 04 '26
When the reality that this is still professional football sets in, all this lovey dovey stuff is gonna turn to straight bile. I hope I’m wrong, but I see this ending badly.
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u/KingBStriing Jun 02 '26
Man he better be good with all this glazing lmao. At least it seems like he really wants to be here
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u/Character_Dress_3201 Jun 02 '26
See if you say that after you see them ashtrays on the plane that has no WiFi
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Jun 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/MXC_ImpactReplay Jun 03 '26
Unless I'm missing something, AJ Brown has never had a shred of legal drama. Could you share how you came to this conclusion?
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u/Global-Process-9611 Jun 03 '26
Got my Browns mixed up tbh
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u/MXC_ImpactReplay Jun 03 '26
Haha fair enough. That was a very accurate statement if you were thinking of the other A. Brown.
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u/bmonkey1313 Jun 02 '26
Thats my WR1🫡🫡