Antonio Brown’s kick to the head of Cleveland Browns punter Spencer Lanning whilst with the Pittsburgh Steelers remains one of the more memorable ‘fails’ in NFL history. 

There are some times in life where, despite how much you might prepare for things and you think that it is going to perfectly, only for it to blow up in your face. Well that is exactly what happened to Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown during a game against the Cleveland Browns at the start of the 2014 season.

Whilst Brown may go down as one of the best wide receivers of his generation, racking up 12,044 receiving yards and 78 receiving touchdowns to go with 4 first-team All-Pro honours, 7 Pro Bowl appearances and being named in the NFL’s All-Decade team of the 2010s, he made his name in the NFL initially as a special team player returning kickoffs and punts. 

And he actually managed to be quite successful with a lot of them.

Earning a reputation

Arguably his most famous one coming against the Indianapolis Colts during the 2015 season, although this one was remembered more for the celebration than it was the play itself, as he ended up, to borrow the old expression, literally hitting his head on the goalpost:

That one went off without a hitch, although he was perhaps a little bit lucky not to earn himself a flag for excessive celebration. One of his earlier attempts to take the ball back to the house though did earn him a flag, although it happened totally by accident. 

Kickstarting the season

It was Week 1 of the 2014 NFL season, and the Steelers were taking on their AFC North rival Browns and Brown was looking to extend the 17-3 lead that that had already built up in the first half when he caught the ball on his own 29-yard line.

He made some excellent progress through the would-be tacklers of the Browns before attempting to make one of the more athletic moves in the sport by hurdling over punter Spencer Lanning’s diving tackle. Just one problem though, Lanning didn’t dive for his legs, but rather tried to tackle him by aiming for his legs whilst squatting down.

As a result, Brown ended up planting his feet right into the facemask of Lanning, which the referees obviously flagged him for and issued him with a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct:

Brown was fined $8,200 by the league for the play, which seems both reasonable and unreasonable all in one. It was clearly an accident as he mistimed his jump to coincide with Lanning’s attempted tackle, but at the same time, you can’t really blame the league for handing out some sort of punishment for what could have been a much worse incident.