A.J. Brown breaks his silence about the Eagles’ level of frustration

The Athletic has live coverage of Eagles vs Buccaneers in the NFC wild card matchup. By announcing “I will speak tomorrow,” Brown had scheduled the much-anticipated end of his weeks-long silence, which snowballed public speculation regarding the root cause of the star receiver’s recent on-field display of frustration. Sirianni, after a viral video circulated of him talking trash to Kansas City Chiefs fans while exiting November’s “Monday Night Football” victory, said, “I’m not going to hide who I am.” But after the third-year head coach blew up on Haason Reddick, the edge rusher’s position coach and Smith in the waning minutes of their Christmas Day escape against the New York Giants, Sirianni acknowledged in “high-pressure areas, they’ve got to see me calm and not tense.” “There is a time and place to be tense and there’s a time and place not to be,” Sirianni said then. Sirianni said Monday, “There is nobody that’s as good of a person as A.J., and, shoot, he’s one of our very best players and one of our best players since I’ve been here in the past three years.” Mailata shared a story in a Monday talk-radio hit with WIP-FM that Brown had organized an Escape Room outing for the entire team to help build chemistry a couple of days before Sunday’s game. After the Eagles lost to the Seattle Seahawks in the final seconds of a Monday night road matchup that they led until the game’s final seconds, a frustrated Hurts said during his postgame interview, “I don’t think we’re committed enough.” Days later, he tried to backtrack on the comment since it insinuated he was calling out his teammates: “When I say ‘we,’ I mean me.” Of course, me is included in we.