PHILADELPHIA — Nick Sirianni, near the end of his Wednesday afternoon news conference, said he is “close to being done answering these questions” about A.J. Brown.

Perhaps the Eagles coach should take his umbrage to his star receiver.

There was a bit of déjà vu to it all. The Eagles won a game in which Brown had little involvement, and Brown, before the Eagles even got back on the practice field to prepare for their next game, caused a stir.

Brown was targeted three times Monday at Green Bay, and not at all after the Eagles’ first drive until their last offensive play, a failed and questionable fourth-down throw. He has previously this season turned to his own social media page and postgame comments in the locker room to express himself after last season voicing his displeasure with the passing game and his involvement in it to reporters after games. This time around, it was a livestream with gamer Janky Rondo.

Brown was asked by Rondo during a game of Madden if everything was good with him. “No, where have you been?” Brown responded. “Family’s good, yeah. Everything else, no. It’s a s--- show."

“If you got me in fantasy, get rid of me,” Brown said later.

Brown, playing the video game with the Eagles as his team, later threw himself the football and said: “Let’s show him some love. Good things happen when he gets touches.” And later, after looking at his stats from the video game, Brown said: “That’s the only highlight of the damn football I’ve been living right now.”

The Eagles, of course, are 7-2 and the top seed in the NFC. Yet the season has been marked by Brown-related drama during multiple weeks, much of it created by the player himself.

Brown said Wednesday evening after the Eagles held a closed-door walk-through that his comments were “fair.”

“If you got eyes, you can see that,” he said. “It’s the same things I’ve been saying all season. So me making light of my situation on Twitch with my friend, that’s something I’m not apologizing for.

“It’s not that I was throwing anybody under the bus,” Brown said. “I’m literally trying to laugh through this s---. This s--- is tough, but I’m trying to make fun of the situation to get through it. It is what it is.”

There is an element of just that, it is what it is. The Eagles are winning games despite Brown being on pace for his first sub-1,000-yard campaign during a season in which he plays more than 13 games (assuming he plays at least five more). Monday marked the fourth time in eight games that Brown was held under 30 receiving yards. He made a cryptic social media post after a win in Tampa Bay in Week 4, when he had two catches for 7 yards, and another after a win in Minnesota in Week 7, when he had four catches for 121 yards and two scores.

“I feel like we do need to do a better job of creating for me, trying to help put me in situations to help contribute,” Brown said. “But right now it just feels as if I’m just freeing it up for everybody.”

Brown said he obviously wants to win, but also wants to contribute.

“I think if we’re really focusing on winning and doing our job, we can’t just keep slapping a Band-Aid over the defense doing their job and getting us out of trouble,” he said. “At one point are we going to pick a box as an offense and say ‘we’re so great.’ That’s what I’m getting at.

“It’s not about I don’t care about winning, all I care about is stats. No. You can’t just keep slapping a Band-Aid over that and expect to win late in the year and you think you’re going to go to it at the end of the year. It’s not going to happen.”

Brown said he didn’t care if he was misunderstood and will “stand up in front and fall on that sword over and over again.”

Is any of this becoming a distraction?

“No, I don’t think so,” Sirianni said. “You can only go from your interactions with everybody and the way they go about their work on a daily basis that you guys aren’t able to see. But, no, it’s business as usual.”

Even if it doesn’t seem like it?

“He’s working hard and he is a big part of this game plan and will be a big part of the game plan going forward and he’s working like crazy when he’s here and I’m excited to have him,” Sirianni said.

Why, then, was Brown not targeted after the first drive until the Eagles’ final offensive play of the game?

Brown was asked and didn’t have an answer, he said.

“I see that the offense is struggling and I want to help contribute and I didn’t get those opportunities,” Brown said. “I’m going to have a problem with that, especially the player I am and especially the player you want me to be.”

Sirianni said there are a lot of plays that are intended to go Brown’s way but for “different reasons” they don’t.

“For instance, [DeVonta Smith’s] touchdown, that play is going to A.J.,” Sirianni said. “They took it away and [Jalen Hurts] threw it over the top. You can’t look at stats … you can’t paint the picture that way. I know that sometimes is all the information that you guys may have, but you can’t look at it that way and just say here’s how the game is playing out.

“There are reasons and different things. A.J. Brown is one of the best wide receivers in the NFL, so of course we’re trying to get him involved in the game every single time. Sometimes it goes like it did in the Rams game or the Vikings game, and sometimes it goes like it did in this last game.”

It has often been the latter; too often for Brown’s satisfaction. Until that changes, Brown’s comments on a livestream won’t be shocking, they’ll be predictable, and his coach will continue to be asked the necessary questions that he’s growing tired of answering.

©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.