Antonio Brown and Juju Smith-Schuster are Not Squashing Their Beef and It's My Favorite Thing On Twitter Right Now

Some time a couple of months back, I was stuck in the waiting room of the oil change place reading some magazine piece I never otherwise would’ve seen about the Yankees of the 1970s. It was told from the point of view of the guys who covered the team for the New York press and what it was like to have this collection of raging egomaniacs constantly dropping verbal bombs on one another. George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson, all of whom hated each other in one form or another. And how every day for the beat writers was about grabbing a quote and running to the guy who was getting talked shit about and getting his reaction. You got the impression all those column inches wrote themselves.

And today, as with all things, technology has streamlined the process and made the time honored tradition of Teammate Hatred almost instantaneous. Never again will those of us who appreciate the fine art of Self-Aggrandizement and the majestic beauty of Team-Killing Dissension have to wait til the morning when some kid drops it on our door printed on some dead trees. We get to see it played out in real time, written in their own words and images, without the middle man.

And so far in 2019 there’s not a Social Media Beef I’m enjoying more than Antonio Brown vs. Juju Smith-Schuster. You might think that two men who have shared a locker room, a huddle and an offense with Ben Roethlisberger would have no problem finding common ground. Say, for instance, what a dick Ben Roethlisberger is. But you’d be mistaken. Even with Brown now off in Oakland sleeping every night on a giant pile of Mark Davis’ treasure like a dragon, he and Juju would’ve either made their peace or learned to ignore each other. But the beef has just escalated.

Let’s recap. Historians disagree on the exact date that war was declared, since there were shots fired, minor incursions and skirmishes along the way. But the most popular theory is that this Tweet by Juju the day Brown was traded was the first true battle:

Followed by this one a couple of weeks later, when Smith-Schuster seemed to ally with Brown’s sworn, bitter enemy:

Those blatant disrespects could not go unanswered. So Brown counter-attacked:

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And when some Steelers fans with 135 Twitter followers said something positive about JJSS, Brown escalated the war:

Which triggered a retaliatory, scorched earth campaign from Juju, where he abandoned conventional weapons altogether in favor of the Twitter equivalent of smacking somebody with their own hands and saying “Why are you hitting yourself?”

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And as of the last few hours, we’ve witnessed Smith-Schuster appealing to the public in order to win hearts and minds:

And that’s where it stands at the moment. Both sides in this conflict seem to be hunkered down, planning the strategy for their next attack. Right now it’s hard to say who has the upper hand. All we know for sure is that when a a once championship-driven team tears itself apart with divisiveness and vitriol in full few of the public, we all win.