Duane Brown sat out all last offseason, and skipped six games, hoping to get a new contract from the Houston Texans. It never materialized, the situation turned sour, and the team traded him to Seattle in October.
Joining the "Now What?" podcast with former teammate Arian Foster, Brown detailed the ugly split from the Texans.
"It was bigger than football for me at that point," Brown said, via the Houston Chronicle. "I was disrespected. I can't walk in that building and only play football. You have to interact with these people at some point. I'm not one of those people that can fake my way through that [stuff]. I can't. It was too far gone, and the departure was needed. It had nothing to do with me wanting to get out of Houston or leave my teammates. Not at all."
Brown wanted to re-do his contract, which was set to expire in 2019. The Texans stood firm, saying that they don't restructure contracts with two years remaining. The standoff led to animosity.
"I wanted to finish my career there, and I wanted security doing that," Brown said. "I made it known right at the end of the season. There was no conversation throughout the whole offseason about it, which is why I didn't show up to anything. There was a conversation around minicamp where they said we can't do deals with two years left, but they've done it before. Basically they were like, 'We've done it before but you're not worth that.' So, I'm like, 'OK, well, I'm not coming to anything then.'"
Brown pointed to the team's ability to cut him for nothing as a reason it made sense to skip offseason workouts.
"At that point I was nine years in and had a pretty damn good nine-year career, so I had to use it at that point," Brown said. "I could have went to training camp that year, got injured and I didn't have any guaranteed money on my contract, so I could have got cut right then and there and that would have been it."
Brown ended his holdout in Week 6 but didn't last much longer with Houston. The 32-year-old spoke out after a remark made by Texans owner Bob McNair during the Fall League Meeting became public.
"I had to voice my displeasure," Brown said of speaking out against the owner. "There was so many other people who wanted to but that fear factor was there. But I was like '[screw it], you don't have to, I will.'"
The Seahawks were thrilled to have a franchise left tackle land in their laps. But Brown still hasn't received the contract extension he was looking for.