Hollywood Brown felt like Baltimore Ravens ‘really didn’t need me’

Arizona Cardinals receiver Hollywood Brown clarified that “people get it wrong” when it comes to how he feels about the Baltimore Ravens, his former team.

“I loved being at the Ravens,” Brown said Wednesday. “It was just something for my career that I had to do, but I love everything that the Ravens do, what they stand for.”

Brown’s first game against the team that was home for his first three NFL seasons comes Sunday in the second week of preseason play.

He said he has already been joking around with a few of his ex-teammates about seeing them and is sure he will grab a meal or two while they are in town.

Brown this week elaborated on how he felt about moving on from Baltimore to join his college teammates, Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, in the desert.

“Yeah, it’s about happiness,” he said. “I mean, I want to feel like I’m a part of something to win. At the Ravens, I just felt like sometimes, they really didn’t need me, like, regardless if I was there or not, they’re going to win games.

“And I love the game too much. I want to be involved.”

Brown set career highs last season in receptions (91) and receiving yards (1,008), marks that were second on the team to tight end Mark Andrews.

The receiver played in all 16 games but he was only on the field for 80% of the team’s offensive snaps, a number that tied for 34th among all NFL wideouts last year, per FantasyPros.

Baltimore dealt him and the 100th pick on the first day of the 2022 NFL Draft, nabbing Arizona’s No. 23 overall selection, which they quickly traded to draft center Tyler Linderbaum out of Iowa two spots later.

Now in Kliff Kingsbury’s Cardinals offensive system that will often utilize three or four wideouts on the field at the same time —  not to mention DeAndre Hopkins’ absence for the first six games — Brown is expected to have the biggest role of his career so far.

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