Facebook fool fumbles at life
ANTONIO Brown will get into the Dingbat Hall of Fame on roller skates one day after exhibiting a rare blend of narcissism and dimwittedness Sunday night. The self-absorbed Steelers wide receiver made Homer Simpson look like a member of Mensa with a single act of stupidity that will go down in the annals of achievements by the eternally clueless.
Moments after Pittsburgh beat the Kansas City Chiefs to advance to next week’s AFC Championship Game in Foxborough, Brown gave the world a look inside the Steelers locker room, including a “private” profanitysprinkled post-game speech by head coach Mike Tomlin.
While Tomlin was firing up his team with some choice words to describe the Patriots, his blockhead pass catcher was recording it for the more than 1 million people (and counting) to hear. It was an epic failure by a simpleton with prodigious football ability.
Brown spent much of the 17 minutes forever captured on social media primping in front of his phone, whispering sweet nothings into the lense, loving himself to weird proportions. Some teammates joined in along the way, saying harmless gibberish about their greatness and excitement about advancing to within one game of the Super Bowl.
All-everything running back Le’Veon Bell (aka Juice) chimed in with the purest message to the strangers tuning in on the social media platform:
“Ya’ll see what we did out there,” said a joyous Bell, cradling a football. “Pittsburgh Steelers is on a run. AFC Championship coming up next. Make sure y’all tune in.”
That was about two minutes into Brown’s social media session. He should have turned off his phone right then and there. Instead, the guy with no self-awareness kept the camera rolling as his head coach relayed this message to the team:
“When you get to this point in the journey, not a lot needs to be said,” Tomlin said. “Let’s say very little moving forward. Let’s start our preparations. We spotted those a-holes a day and a half. They played yesterday. Our game got moved to tonight. We’re going to touch down at 4 o’clock in the f------ morning. So be it. We’ll be ready for their ass. But you ain’t gotta tell them we coming. Because some of us might not like the damn (inaudible). The chest pounding…. Keep a low profile. Let’s get ready to ball out…”
With apologies to President-elect Trump, this actually was “locker room talk.” Tomlin’s words were meant to re-focus his team, no different than messages heard in every winning locker room every week in the NFL.
Those speeches, however, aren’t supposed to extend beyond the locker room walls (sans the sanitized versions put out by teams on their websites).
Brown, who was around a bank of lockers, was too busy smiling in front of his phone and touching his hair after his eight-catch, 108yard performance to absorb any of Tomlin’s message.
“Be cool on social media!” an unidentified teammate or coach implored after Tomlin’s brief remarks. “This is about us. Nobody else, man.”
Brown, lost in his own world, was more concerned with the number of people tuning into his Facebook Live session — 16,000!! — to notice or care about that message, too.
Then, a player who sounded an awful lot like leader Ben Roethlisberger, stepped in front of his teammates and delivered the smartest remarks of all. “It’s a lion’s den we’re going into this week,” Roethlisberger said. “It’s a lion’s den. I’ve been there. A lot of us have been there. This isn’t going to be fun. Keep your mouth shut … Let’s play Steeler football and be a Steeler all week.”
Brown, part-receiver, part halfwit, kept T filming, looking more foolish by the second. he Patriots already know that the Steelers are going to try to crush their souls to advance to Super Bowl LI, but Brown didn’t have to advertise his coach’s message to the world. He certainly didn’t need to give his opponents any more reasons to despise them.
“That’s against our team policy,” Tom Brady, who once torched mouthy Steelers safety Anthony Smith, told WEEI radio Monday morning. “Don’t think that would go over well with Coach.”
Brown’s cluelessness knows no bounds. Maybe he’ll start another Facebook Live sesh during the Steelers’ game-planning meeting this week.