Antonio Brown Didn’t Hold Back After Jake Paul Announced His NFL Plan

Jake Paul wants to play in the NFL. Antonio Brown thinks that idea is laughable, and he said so in terms that leave no room for interpretation.

The YouTube star turned boxer sat down on the a16z podcast recently and laid out a plan that sounds borderline delusional to anyone who follows professional football. Paul said he wants to transition from boxing to the NFL, specifically as a slot receiver, and he’s even considering walking onto the Stanford team to get the college experience first.

“I do have NFL aspirations after boxing. I want to play slot receiver, and so I think to get that experience, college first would be good so I could walk onto the Stanford team. I’m being serious,” Paul said. “The idea of it happened today. I was originally thinking I’ll just go straight to the Cleveland Browns or Dallas Cowboys, but they’re probably going to want to see me play first. So, it might be better if I start off in college and have a little bit of an advantage over the younger, not as big kids before going into the NFL.”

Antonio Brown had one thing to say

It took Antonio Brown about five minutes to fire back. The former NFL wide receiver, who has his own complicated history with the league, posted a blunt response on X. “Dude would get f***ing rocked,” Brown wrote.

That was it. No long thread. No video breakdown. Just seven words that sum up how most people with any NFL knowledge probably feel about this whole thing.

The internet piled on pretty quickly too. One commenter wrote, “Paying AJ $100m to box him is one thing, but dont think he can buy his way into the NFL.” Another said, “NFL?? Jake talking crazy.” Someone else asked, “Why are we still giving this dude a platform.”

There’s a recovery timeline here that matters

Paul is still healing from a broken jaw he suffered during his fight with Anthony Joshua last year. That’s not nothing. Fighting a heavyweight in a boxing ring and running routes against NFL-caliber defensive backs are entirely different kinds of physical punishment, and he hasn’t even fully recovered from the first one yet.

No word on Paul’s next fight. He did mention interest in fighting Francis Ngannou at some point, but nothing’s been confirmed. It’s worth remembering that Paul has made a career out of saying wild things and then sort of backing into them actually happening. But the NFL is a different animal. You can’t just buy your way onto a roster the way you can negotiate a boxing match. Teams don’t care about your social media following when you’re trying to block a pass rusher who weighs 280 pounds and runs a 4.5.

Brown, for all his own off-field chaos, knows exactly what it takes to succeed at that level. And he delivered the kind of reality check that no podcast interview can prepare you for.