Bengals cornerback Adam Jones said it after the game, repeated it the next day and remained insistent on Tuesday night: Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown flopped and faked that late fourth-quarter injury in Saturday's wild-card game all the way to a personal-foul penalty against Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict.
Judge for yourself:
This is just brutal pic.twitter.com/hBsIAJIBwO
— The Cauldron (@TheCauldron) January 10, 2016
Eighteen seconds later -- thanks in no small part to a subsequent Jones personal foul for making contact with an official -- the Steelers walked out of Paul Brown stadium with a victory. Mike Tomlin may not want to talk about it, but Jones will.
Here he is on Showtime's Inside the NFL, explaining to co-host and Jets wideout Brandon Marshall what happened. (The entire segment is worth your time but the discussion about Brown begins around the 7:05 mark.)
Marshall: "Did (Brown) really wink at you?"
Jones: "Yeah. Honest to God. Did you see him smile when he walked off the field? Go back and look at the film. ... I said, 'AB, you all right?' Now if you're knocked out, you think you're going to be able to wink and think about all that at the same time."
Good news, though: if Brown doesn't play this week, not only will Jones then believe he wasn't faking, he will offer up a public apology.
"But you know and I know," Jones added, "when Saturday gets here ... he will be cleared Friday, I promise you, 24 hours before the game."
And in case you're wondering, Jones maintains that Burfict's hit on Brown wasn't dirty. The league disagrees -- it was the final straw in the three-game suspension they handed Burfict earlier this week.
Marshall: "I saw the incomplete pass and thought, OK, it's gonna be tough for (the Steelers) to pick up the first down. Then they slo-mo-ed (Burfict's hit). When I saw it, and saw (Brown's) hands flail, and I saw his head lean back, the first thing I said was, '[the officials] got it right.' And that's being honest."
Jones: "That's your opinion. I'm still sticking by my opinion that I don't think it was intentional and I definitely don't think it was a dirty hit."
