A.J. Brown won.
The game. The argument.
And life. Yeah, that’s the best way to put it. He basically won at life Sunday.
No one in Philly could have felt better than Brown did Sunday. His current team, the Philadelphia Eagles, not only beat his former team, the Tennessee Titans. He personally roasted the club that didn’t think he was worth granting a nine-figure contract.
A.J. Brown Roasts Tennessee Titans in Philadelphia Eagles Win
Brown lit up the Titans’ overmatched secondary for 119 yards and two touchdowns on eight catches, as the Eagles looked very much the league’s best team in a 35-10 beatdown of Tennessee.
Philadelphia improved to 11-1 with the win. The Titans fell to 7-5 and lost for the third time in the last five games.
Brown was unguardable. He scored on touchdown catches of 40 and 29 yards — and had another deep one overturned on replay because he couldn’t get both feet in bounds.
That was about the only thing that went wrong for Brown on Sunday, as he made the Eagles very wise for giving up a first-round pick to acquire him last April. The Titans, meanwhile, looked very foolish for letting him walk.
“A.J. had a good game,” said Titans coach Mike Vrabel — who wasn’t exactly thrilled by GM Jon Robinson’s decision to deal Brown at the time. “We can’t give up big plays on defense. We tried to make him earn it coming into the game. We clearly weren’t able to.”
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In his three seasons spent in Nashville, Brown caught 185 passes for 2,995 yards (16.2) and 31 touchdowns. But Tennessee balked at giving him the type of contract (four years, $100 million) that Philadelphia was more than eager to do.
That, of course, didn’t sit well with Brown. He made the Titans pay for the insolence. Brown said he had the game circled on his calendar. He wanted to retire a Titan. Tennessee had other plans.
“I wanted to make them regret that decision,” he added, according to WIP radio in Philadelphia.
Brown is now up to 61 receptions for 950 yards and nine touchdowns on the season. All three figures lead the team. But there’s a case to be made that Brown isn’t just the best receiver on his team but the entire league.
He entered the game tied for first with Stefon Diggs, according to ESPN Analytics’ receiver rankings, ahead of the likes of Justin Jefferson and Tyreek Hill.
That ranking was based on player tracking data from NFL’s Next Gen Stats, which evaluates every route a pass catcher runs and scores his performance on a scale of 0 to 99: Getting open (97), making the catch (54) yards after catch (66).