Marquise Brown felt he wasn’t ‘needed’ on the Ravens and didn’t like the scheme

Hollywood Brown shares why he requested a trade

Marquise “Hollywood” Brown spoke on the I AM ATHLETE podcast and discussed what caused him to request the Baltimore Ravens trade him to the Arizona Cardinals on Thursday night.

“It was just some, like, my happiness. I mean, I talked to Lamar [Jackson] about it after my second year and then after my third year leading up to the end of the season when he wasn’t playing [due to injury] I let him know again like, ‘Yeah bro, I can’t do it.’ And it’s not really on Lamar, like I love Lamar. It was just the system wasn’t for me, personally. I love all my teammates, I love the guys, but it was just something I had to think about for myself. The Ravens—we both handled it the right way. I didn’t go out and make anything public, I just kept it in-house, kept working and you know it all worked out.”

Hollywood confirmed a second time that he requested the trade after the 2021 season, and was then asked why he requested a trade.

“The situations that I was put in a lot of times,” Brown said. “Even in college I didn’t catch as many balls but the situations I was put in [college] could help me thrive. I just felt times throughout my career [with the Ravens] I wasn’t put in the best situations and it was just something I was dealing with.”

Brown also went on to say that he didn’t feel like the Ravens needed him because of the scheme they ran, and criticized how he’d be utilized differently in the playoffs vs. the regular season.

“I’ll get to the playoffs [and] they use me how it’s supposed to be [and] I go for 100-yard games,” Brown said. “I’m like, ‘OK, this should lead on,’ Then I go games where we losing [and] they wait until like the third or fourth [quarter] to start getting me the ball [and] I help the team win. Then I go to the following game and not get the ball. So, it was just one of those things like such as a mind-thing. I’m too much of a competitor to not get the ball ‘til the fourth quarter. I’m too much of a competitor to not help my team until we down and out and then it’s like, ‘Alright, here we go.’”

According to Pro Football Reference, over the course of Brown’s career, the Ravens have utilized him more in the first half than the second half of games. However, last season Brown did see more targets when the Ravens were trailing.

That, of course, lacks context as the Ravens suffered significant injuries, including one which left Jackson out for the final six games of the season.