You just completed a major upset win over a rival pro team during the playoffs..... What's the first thing that you would do? Well, if you're All-Pro wide receiver Antonio Brown, it seems it's pretty clear. Directly after the Pittsburgh Steelers’ victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on January 15th, Steelers' Antonio Brown picked up his iPhone and began broadcasting head coach Mike Tomlin's victory speech on Facebook Live. During the speech by Tomlin, he even asked his players to keep a low profile and not engage over social media, all while Brown were live broadcasting. Brown was reportedly fined by the Steelers and heavily criticized for his actions.
According to an NFL.com report, Brown has a 'six-figure' deal with the social networking giant Facebook, who likely are the ones that urged the star player to broadcast after the victory. Brown broke the NFL's social media policy for posting content before reporters had completed their post game duties and may be subject to an incremental fine from the league.
Since the incident, Brown has apologized and claimed he just wanted to share the playoff win with the fans. "It was wrong of me to do, against team and NFL policy, and I have apologized to Coach Tomlin and my teammates for my actions" Brown said on his Facebook page. "I'm sorry to them for letting it become a distraction and something that they've had to answer questions about while we're preparing for a big game on Sunday."
With all the excitement headed into Sunday's game against the New England Patriots, it's safe to assume Brown will be restricting his actions over social to avoid another fine. When asked about the social media incident, Opposing coach for the New England Patriots Bill Bellicheck responded "Yeah, as you know I'm not on SnapFace and all that. I don't really get those. I'm just really worried about getting our team ready to go. I'm not really too worried about what they put on InstantChat, or whatever it is." One thing for sure is Bellicheck is focused on taking his team to the Super Bowl, but is Antonio Brown?