Tim Benz: Antonio Brown's interview was maddening. Now let's talk about where he was right.

Antonio Brown’s first Pittsburgh radio interview since he left the Steelers was 22 minutes of rambling inconsistencies, inaccuracies and illogical denials.

That being said, let’s try to do what you may think is impossible. Let’s talk about where Brown was right.

Because, believe it or not, A.B. was actually on point about a few things during his appearance on 93.7 The Fan on Thursday.

Trust me. That last sentence was 10 times tougher for me to write than it was for you to read.

Brown was right about the NFL. There is no investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct. The league knows what it needs to know. And it is dragging its feet on purpose in an effort to keep the former All-Pro receiver out of the league.

Commissioner Roger Goodell knows NFL teams can’t help themselves. Brown is a talent. And if he is available, a team will sign him. And Goodell doesn’t want to deal with that headache. Nor does he want to have to help another team clean up that mess.

Brown is also right about JuJu Smith-Schuster.

Kinda.

He’s not right to harbor such bitter resentment toward Smith-Schuster. JuJu didn’t do anything wrong. No, not even posting that picture of himself scoring against the Raiders, Brown’s new team (at the time). By that point in March, Brown had excoriated the entire Steelers organization and was obviously peeved about Smith-Schuster getting team MVP in 2018.

So I don’t fault Smith-Schuster for that, even if that choice of picture was intended to be a jab at Brown. Brown had that coming.

But Brown is right to point out that Smith-Schuster had only “500 yards” and that “the Steelers missed the playoffs. That’s a problem.”

Well, 552 yards. But close enough.

He’s also right when he pointed out that he was vilified for speeding on McKnight Road, but when Smith-Schuster posted a video of himself going 104 mph, the story came and went within a day.

And, to a larger point of a double standard, Brown is frequently ripped for living his life on social media. Yet Smith-Schuster does the same thing, and “he’s just a kid having fun.”

For instance, what do you think the reaction would’ve been had Brown went cliff jumping after a garbage season compounded by a knee injury?

“It’s my contract year, send it” #Steelers pic.twitter.com/6lxAGEFeiu

— JuJu’s Bike ⓳ (@JuJusBike_) February 5, 2020

Oh, you didn’t know JuJu posted that video this week?

Yeah. My point — and Brown’s — exactly.

It also appears Brown was onto something when he spoke about how teammates view Ben Roethlisberger.

“Ben is really nonchalant to what people think about him,” Brown said. “People really talk (about) him behind his back. They don’t share (with) him to his face. So a lot of people who deal with Ben aren’t dealing with him in (the) reality of what it is. A lot of people are nervous to tell him what it really is, based on the position he is in.”

There must be some truth to that, based on how some ex-teammates threw Roethlisberger under the bus after their departures and during the fallout from Brown’s exodus.

Go back and look at some quotes from Josh Harris, Isaac Redman (which he later tried to walk back), Emmanuel Sanders and Rashard Mendenhall.

Those guys hurled all sorts of rotten things at Roethlisberger, from charges as minor as being unapproachable and having bad practice habits all the way to racial bias and fumbling on purpose.

That must not be the majority opinion of the quarterback, based on how the likes of Maurkice Pouncey and Ramon Foster rushed to his defense. However, as Brown outlines, none of those other guys apparently is willing to talk to Roethlisberger man to man.

How does Roethlisberger fix that? I don’t know. It’s tough to work out a problem with someone if they don’t tell you they have a problem. But maybe just trying to be more ingratiating to younger players may help.

But nothing about that radio interview with Brown made me feel that he is any closer to stability. He was scattered, meandering and contradictory.

Brown can talk all he wants about the strides he has made toward seeking “positivity.” Yet he couldn’t even go 20 minutes without undermining the goal of smoothing over some broken past relationships.

He began the interview apologizing to just about everyone in Pittsburgh.

OK. Not JuJu or the cops who pulled him over on McKnight Road. But everyone else.

Yet by the end of it, there was Brown again. Sniping. Criticizing. Taking shots. Stringing up negativity. And blame shifting.

He even roped Hines Ward into the maelstrom.

So, yes, Brown proved he’s still the detached, narcissistic egomaniac we all know him to be.

But that doesn’t mean he was entirely wrong about everything he said.