THAT’S ONE WAY TO MAKE AN EXIT: Antonio Brown’s meltdown may cost him more than spot on the Tampa Bay Bucs. Head Coach Bruce Arians said after the incident that Brown was ‘no longer a Buc.’ “He needed eight more receptions, 55 more receiving yards and another receiving touchdown to hit three separate bonuses that would have earned him $333,000 each. Brown had three catches for 26 yards and was targeted five times. It’s unclear what sparked the outburst on the sideline that left the wide receiver to walking off the field.”

Related: Everyone’s Saying Same Thing About Mike Tomlin, Antonio Brown. “Many have since taken to social media to praise Tomlin for how he was able to handle things during Brown’s time in Pittsburgh. ‘Credit to Mike Tomlin, he had both Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell for years and kept that circus under control,’ one fan tweeted.”

UPDATE: Slap Shot redux? AB’s million-dollar “take this job and shove it” moment. “At first, people assumed that Arians had benched Brown and that Brown overreacted to it. Later, the Tampa Bay Times reported the opposite happened — Arians wanted Brown to go into the game, and Brown refused. Arians was already down one star receiver in Chris Godwin and Brady needed reliable targets in a game that the Bucs were losing at the time.  An argument ensued, during which Arians apparently told Brown to ‘get out,’ and Brown decided to pull his stunt…In one sense, Arians was trying to put cash in Brown’s pocket by getting him on the field. Brown had five-plus quarters left in the season to get eight more catches from the GOAT Tom Brady, who might still be the greatest QB in the league for this season alone as well. Fifty-five yards would have been child’s play for a Brady-Brown combo, and the pair could have racked up a TD almost at will. That dance cost Brown one million dollars, in opportunity cost alone. It will likely cost him his paycheck for the next game, too. He signed a one-year, $3.1 million contract in April, which comes up to $182,350-plus per game. That wasn’t the kind of paycheck that [Johnny] Paycheck wanted to shove, needless to say.”

MORE: Report: Antonio Brown claims ankle injury prevented him from re-entering Bucs game.

Arians reportedly told Jay Glazer that Brown had refused to return to the game in the second half when he was told to. But according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, Brown felt he was too injured to return to the game at that point. He’d missed several weeks with an ankle injury — which happened to almost exactly coincide with his fake vaccine card suspension — and had been limited leading up to Week 17 after tweaking it in practice.

What he told the staff, from what I understand, is that he was not going into the game because, in his mind, he did not feel he was healthy,” Rapoport said. “The response then from the offensive coaches and from Bruce Arians was, ‘If you are not gonna go into the game when we tell you to go into the game, then you cannot be here.’ At that point, they threw him off the sidelines and then cut him from the team.”

Was Brown’s ankle injury really the cause of his exit?

Brown’s reported claim that he was too injured to play adds a new wrinkle to everything we already know. It’s certainly plausible it was the cause, because an ankle injury would have prevented him from playing last month had he not been suspended by the NFL.

However, Brown didn’t seem to be favoring his ankle when he was jumping around in the end zone and running to the locker room.

And considering Brown’s history of being difficult, the injury story Rapoport relayed feels too simple and one-sided to be the whole truth. It may have played a part, but there’s probably more to this strange incident we have yet to hear about.

Arians doesn’t confirm injury story

If there is more to this incident, Arians didn’t reveal it when he spoke with the media on Monday. He very noticeably did not confirm that report that Brown refused to re-enter the game due to an injury.

At the moment though, “Antonio Brown still with Bucs despite assertions to the contrary…‘That’s up to [general manager Jason Licht] and what he wants to do,’ Arians said when asked about how the Buccaneers will move on from Brown. According to ESPN, the Buccaneers were talking with the NFL about to move forward with Brown’s situation. The wide receiver is sure to face some kind of discipline from the NFL due to the outburst and leaving the stadium in the middle of the game against the New York Jets. The Buccaneers still had Brown on their official roster.”

(Updated and bumped.)