Report: The Steelers Were Giving Full Access to Antonio Brown's Personal Photographer

Pittsburgh football writer Ed Bouchette has been doing the podcast/talk show circuit and has been offering up this small but remarkably telling insight into the Dysfunctional Family Circus that is the Steelers right now. Particularly with Antonio Brown going all Broken Arrow on them this week and not showing up to work. From The Dan Patrick Show:

DP: What’s the biggest question you have for Mike Tomlin right now?
EB: Well, I’d like to know what he’s going to do to try and get this under control. it hasn’t worked in the past, whatever he’s done. You know Antonio has, for lack of a better word, a photographer following him around everywhere. And [the photographer] has access that nobody else has. And he was sitting on the bench at the game on Sunday. Now I heard that somebody shooed him away, but he has access that – I asked one of our photographers, “Do you have that kind of access?” and he said “They would tase me first.”

DP: Now, is this a videographer? Is this a reality show?
EB: No, you can see it, he puts it on Instagram and stuff like that. He follows him everywhere and, I don’t know. Belichick banned a guy for Tom Brady last year. I think Mike Tomlin might want to start there.

Holy shit. As bad as you and I and everyone thought things are in Pittsburgh, it’s actually worse. I mean no one, not even the biggest barrel-assed Steelers honk from Squirrel Hill with a dog named Ward and son named Bradshaw and an Art Rooney memorial shamrock tattoo on his calf, has been under any delusion Mike Tomlin had control of his locker room. Not since Brown Facebook Live-d this bizarro, 17-minute opus to his own narcissism:

… while Tomlin was in the act of telling his players to “cool it on social media” all week.

That was in the middle of the 2016 playoffs. Tomlin’s team responded by going to Foxboro and getting their dicks stomped on, 36-17. The Steelers only receiving touchdown was a garbage time throw to Cobi Hamilton. Brown had 7 catches for 77 yards. So by his standards, he wasn’t much of a factor.

So how did Tomlin handle it? How did he reign in one of his three franchise offensive players for directly going against his wishes, not “cooling” the social media stuff and then not backing it up? By giving full, unfettered access to his personal social media camera guy.

Way to make your self-absorbed wideout straighten up and fly right. That ought to learn him.

For sure I have no problem with athletes getting in front of cameras on their accounts. More to the point, I love it. It makes our jobs so much easier. If it were up to me, every one of these guys would be filming themselves more than Les Stroud. But that’s because my job is to write goofy posts every time they embarrass themselves or run around with porn stars. Tomlin’s, presumably, is to get his players to focus on winning games, thus saving his job. Yet he’s got one player running around posing for a camera full time and wonders … what? Why Brown is acting so entitled?

Like Bouchette says, Belichick didn’t let Brady get away with that. When he was doing Tom vs. Time there wasn’t a single shot from inside Gillette. And not only does Brady has his own production company now, he’s accomplished … doing the math here … add playoffs … multiply by the championships … carry the 5 … infinity more than Antonio Brown. So yeah, best of luck trying to put the toothpaste of Brown’s special treatment back into the tube of his raging ego. And Mike Tomlin and the Steelers have only themselves to blame.