It’s time for Eagles to move on from A.J. Brown following his quick and quiet playoff departure

PHILADELPHIA — A.J. Brown checked out fast Sunday night after another lackluster performance by the Eagles’ offense left them to deal with a season-ending loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the first round of the NFC playoffs.

By the time the locker room opened to the media, Brown was fully dressed and ready to go home. He did stop at a number of his teammates’ lockers to say goodbye, including quarterback Jalen Hurts, but when approached by reporters, he politely said, “I’m gonna go.”

Now the question is: Will we ever see him again in an Eagles uniform?

No should be the answer.

If this were just about talent, the answer would at least be open for debate. Brown wasn’t the same explosive guy he had been during his first three seasons with the team. That’s certainly a concern.

When coach Nick Sirianni lamented the regression of his offense in his final postgame press conference, he admitted that the Eagles’ inability to create explosive plays was an issue that needed to be fixed.

“You’ve got to be able to be explosive,” he said. “It’s really hard to dink and dunk down the field. It’s really hard to get behind the sticks with negative plays. You’ve got to be able to create explosives. We need to find ways to be more explosive. Again, that starts with me.”

Perhaps, but players play, and there’s no denying that Brown’s explosiveness has been on the decline every year since he joined the Eagles.

He had 23 catches of 20-plus yards and six of 40-plus yards in 2022 after being acquired in a trade with the Titans. He set a franchise record with 1,496 yards that season and helped the Eagles reach the Super Bowl. It sure seemed as if he had found his forever happy home.

The following year, despite a personality clash with Hurts and a couple weeks of silence, he still had 21 catches of 20-plus yards and finished with 1,456 receiving yards, the second-highest mark in franchise history.

With the offense featuring a heavy dose of running Saquon Barkley last season, Brown’s numbers again regressed, although he did have 1,079 receiving yards in 13 game.s Winning a Super Bowl, however, does tend to heal all wounds. Brown and Hurts had a touching sideline moment as the Eagles celebrated their second Super Bowl title. The two showed up ready to run it back this summer.

But by the middle of this season, Brown was back to his old antics, sending out cryptic messages on social media before finally admitting in one of them that he believed the Eagles’ offense was “a s–t show” and that “he was struggling” with his role in it.

I loved how former Raiders general manager and current Westwood One analyst Mike Mayock described Brown’s antics during an interview with NJ Advance Media last month.

“I’m not a big fan of the passive aggressive social media kind of stuff that he puts out there,” Mayock said.

Mayock said it’s hard to say how Brown’s woe-is-me presence impacted the Eagles “unless you’re in the building.” But he admitted that he has seen teams break apart because one player is not pulling in the same direction as his teammates.

Know this: The less productive a player becomes, the less tolerant a team becomes.

Sirianni got into a brief confrontation with Brown on the sidelines late in the second quarter Sunday after one of the Eagles’ four three-and-out series in the game. Eagles chief security officer Dom DiSandro stepped between the two, but Brown did get in some last words after that.

“Yeah, I was trying to get him off the field because we were about to punt and that was really it,” Sirianni said. “I love A.J. I think he knows how I feel about him. I have a special relationship with him. We’ve probably [gone] through every emotion you can possibly have together. We’ve laughed together, we’ve cried together, we’ve yelled at each other. We’re both emotional. I was trying to get him off the field, and that happens in this game.”

Sirianni is known as a players’ coach, but sometimes he tolerates too much.

It would have been nice to hear Brown’s take on the incident, but he went into hiding for the last month of the season and often lied about it in the process. Just last week, he promised he’d be available to the media on Friday, but then never made an appearance in the locker room.

Big deal, it’s only the media, you might say. Well, his teammates are required to answer questions they don’t want to face and Brown shouldn’t be allowed to be any different. That’s something that Sirianni should help handle, but he has no interest in doing so.

It’s called being accountable.

It seemed as if Brown had finally been humbled in Los Angeles a month ago after he dropped a couple of passes that helped lead to the Eagles’ overtime loss to the Chargers on a Monday night.

“We set things up all game and (Hurts) made a play, so that (end-zone drop) hurt,” Brown said that night. “I’m more than capable of making those plays. You know, Jalen trusts me in any situation. I made some plays, but I wasn’t great when it mattered. (The interception) was going to be another tough one, but I am more than capable of making that grab.”

That was the last time Brown spoke to the media.

He had multiple drops and zero big plays in the Eagles’ final game of the season Sunday against the 49ers. He finished with three catches for 25 yards.

Blink, however, and you might have missed him checking out of the locker room.

Will we ever see him again? The four years remaining on his contract, which includes $84 million in guaranteed money from a three-year extension, will make trading him difficult.

General manager Howie Roseman should try anyway.