A.J. Brown did some light reading on the Philadelphia Eagles' sideline as they took care of the Green Bay Packers in an NFL wild-card game. Everyone's first reaction to seeing the Fox footage was to think that it was an odd thing to do. But Brown explained that he flips pages during competition quite regularly and the author's sales got a nice bump so everything seems a bit more normal than it did in the heat of the moment on Sunday.
The Eagles hanging on to win helped a lot too, because the segments that would have been spawned had Jordan Love somehow found a way to eliminate Philadelphia with Brown having just a single catch would have been a thrill ride.
None of Brown's teammates have been anything less than supportive of his in-game hobby and one wouldn't expect anything different, what with a Super Bowl on the to-do list. It takes someone slightly removed from the situation to offer up something like that.
Enter Greg Jennings on Monday's First Things First.
"I struggle attacking A.J. Brown in this moment but I have to call a spade a spade," Jennings said. "If I were on that sideline and I'm sitting next to a teammate and he's reading a book and we're playing a playoff game, I got a problem with it."
.@GregJennings sounds off on A.J. Brown for reading a book on the sideline during Eagles-Packers:
— First Things First (@FTFonFS1) January 13, 2025
“If I were on that sideline, and I’m sitting next to a teammate and he’s reading a book and we’re playing a playoff game, I got a problem with it!” pic.twitter.com/SEPqB2G8Aq
"It doesn't even compute," Jennings continued. "Are you kidding me right now?"
Jennings then broke down the photo of Brown reading, speculating what the others around him must have been thinking. He went out of his way to say he is very pro-reading and added that he's sure the book has stayed a huge role in helping the receiver stay locked in.
All of this makes sense. Seeing a football player read a book on the sideline just doesn't feel right, even if it's difficult to precisely articulate why. Perhaps that's why reading has never made a cameo in a playoff game before.
The bad news for people who don't like it is that there's no way Brown stops reading now. If anything the book is only going to get bigger and the pages more dog-eared.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Greg Jennings Would Have Had a Problem With a Teammate Pulling an A.J. Brown.
