The Pittsburgh Steelers’ Antonio Brown took to Facebook Live….again. Don’t worry. This time it didn’t embarrass his coach or make him look foolish and inconsiderate.
How could it? AB and his team were bounced from the playoffs by the mighty Patriots. So the All-World wideout had plenty of time to shoot his own social posts while heading off with his family for a little R&R.
Brown went live to apologize (sorta) for his locker room distraction after his Steelers beat Kansas City in round two of the playoffs.
Of course, we learned that Facebook has a deal with Brown to do FB Live videos. No shocker there. The behemoth social media company is pushing live video through their platform by having endorsement deals with celebrities and even Youtube stars.
Facebook is looking to take some of the market share from Youtube. So paying out big bucks to big names is a sure way to get users to pay attention to the FB Live service.
Also no surprise, Mike Florio reported that Facebook actually encouraged Brown to do the locker room report with his own phone, while ignoring his coach’s victory speech. NFLers shooting little videos on a plane headed for a basketball game is not as tantalizing as a locker room shoot that captures an embarrassing moment or two in the background.
None of this drama had any effect on the playoffs, though. New England was the better team, so they advanced.
On the other hand, Patriots players didn’t have to answer questions about their star player being selfish all week either. Bill Belichick’s team knows how to keep the main thing the main thing.
Tom Brady isn’t heading to his seventh Super Bowl because he is easily distracted by a few hundred thousand dollars waved in his face by social media companies.
I’m a huge AB fan. He is dominant in 95 percent of the games he’s involved in. And whether he does the locker room shoot or not, his team was not well-rounded enough to beat the Pats in Foxborough.
Still, Brown does not need to cause his teammates any drama. That leads to his quarterback calling him out publically just as head coach Mike Tomlin did in the days following his preening on FB Live.
In Brown’s latest FB video he says he will “Rise Above” all the noise, and he thanked his fans for standing by him. And there’s no doubt he will be back better than ever in 2017.
He should keep in mind that other top tier receivers have worn out their welcome with repeated selfish acts. T.O. comes to mind as well as Randy Moss.
Hell, coach Tomlin even mentioned the possibility of Brown being moved if his stunts continued.
“I think that’s why often times you see great players move around from team to team,” Tomlin said. “I definitely don’t want that to be his story. I’m sure he doesn’t want that to be his story, so he has to address these things that have put him and us, in time to time, in settings as such where it needs to be addressed.”
That should be a wake-up call to best receiver in the NFL.
Easy money from Facebook would be hard to turn down. However, he should know when to ignore their pushes to exploit his main gig for the benefit of Zuckerberg’s empire.
Antonio Brown will be just fine. All he has to do is keep the main thing the main thing as he moves forward. The side-hustle money will come easy enough without him sidetracking his own football career.