Bill Belichick compares Antonio Brown to Randy Moss

In his first real comments regarding Antonio Brown, Bill Belichick compared the receiver’s arrival to when the Patriots brought Randy Moss aboard in 2007.

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick refused to so much as acknowledge any questions regarding the team’s reported weekend acquisition of Antonio Brown on Sunday, just after New England defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers by a score of 33-3. In typical Belichick fashion, he seemed utterly uninterested in discussing anything other than what had just occurred on the football field with the players officially signed to his roster.

He changed his tune just a bit on Tuesday though. With New England officially announcing Brown’s signing on Monday, Belichick now decided the timing was appropriate to take questions regarding his newest player.

While he didn’t offer up too much in the way of juicy sound bytes or how exactly he plans to employ Brown in the Patriots’ already-potent offense, he did have one noteworthy moment when he compared Brown to former Patriot Randy Moss, per CBS Sports’ Tyler Sullivan.

Asked by reporters whether he was concerned over Brown’s antics in Pittsburgh or Oakland, Belichick at first refused to take the bait, saying, “I wasn’t in either of those places so I can’t comment on what did or didn’t happen there.”

It’s what he said next though that stands out:

"“It’s the same thing you guys said about Randy Moss when we brought him in.”"

Belichick knows that a popular narrative surrounding New England’s controversial signing of Brown is that the Patriots are forgoing established team chemistry and the well-documented “Patriot Way” in order to make an exception for Brown.

The superstar wide receiver has been prolific and astounding on the field, but he’s also been a menace and a supreme disruption off of it over the past year or so, proving himself a recurring headache for former coaches Mike Tomlin and Jon Gruden, as well as Belichick’s close associate and Raiders GM Mike Mayock.

Belichick, like the rest of his Patriots, isn’t oblivious to this perspective. As much as it may seem like he doesn’t follow the news at times (ie. Andrew Luck’s retirement) or social media (ie. his repeated references to the fictional “MyFace”), he knows that his team is taking heavy criticism for their gamble in signing Brown.

He just doesn’t particularly care. And to illustrate how much he doesn’t care, he took his Tuesday conference call with the media as an opportunity to remind everyone just how eerily similar this whole Brown-to-the-Patriots saga is to a similar dynamic that occurred 12 years ago.

Back in 2007, Randy Moss was apparently a player in decline. After getting traded by the Minnesota Vikings to the Raiders in 2005 and generally failing to live up to expectations, Moss was subsequently jettisoned to New England after making it publicly known he was unhappy in Oakland.

The change of scenery quickly did him good though, and the rest is (literally) history. Moss became the greatest receiving weapon this side of Rob Gronkowski for quarterback Tom Brady, and he rewrote the NFL record books that year by catching 23 touchdowns – which is still the highest single-season total ever.

While Brown and Moss are certainly two different types of players, the parallels are still there to be examined. Both were/are sensational talents coming from untraditional college football programs. Both went to Oakland briefly and expressed their unhappiness being with the Raiders organization. Both eventually ended up in New England playing for Belichick and alongside Brady.

We all know how things worked out with Moss as a Patriot. Now it’s Brown’s turn to don a New England uniform, and we’re all eagerly awaiting the results of this unlikely yet not altogether unexpected union between a troubled but talented player and the NFL’s preeminent franchise.