Right now, Antonio Brown makes headlines off the field rather than on it. That wasn’t always the case, but there was a notable exception after the Pittsburgh Steelers won their most recent playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs in 2016. Brown went live on Facebook from the Steelers’ locker room after the game, and during the clip, head coach Mike Tomlin could be heard calling the Patriots, Pittsburgh’s opponent in the AFC Championship Game, as “those assholes.”

Brown was fined by the team, and appearing on 93.7 The Fan earlier today with host Joe Starkey, former Patriots S Devin McCourty said that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick called a team meeting and told his players they would face major consequences if they did the same thing.

“The funniest part of that is we got in a meeting next, and Bill basically cursed us out and told us if anybody dared to pull out their phone and go live in any type of squad meeting or anything, they would be cut and off the team before they could even post it.”

McCourty said no one in the Patriots’ building had any problem with Tomlin’s comments on the livestream because they agreed with the sentiment that they were assholes and it was the way they wanted to play. In the AFC Championship Game, New England smoked Pittsburgh in a 36-17 win.

Tomlin didn’t add any fuel to New England’s fire, but the Patriots came out and again were the better team, as was usually the case when they played the Steelers. Le’Veon Bell suffered an early ankle injury, but the Steelers simply had zero answers for Tom Brady and Chris Hogan, who had a career game with nine receptions for 180 yards and two touchdowns.

As stupid as Brown’s decision to livestream was, he wasn’t a player the Steelers were going to cut. He was the best receiver in the league, and the notion of cutting him would’ve been ludicrous. Would Belichick have cut him? Probably not, but he did bench Malcolm Butler in Super Bowl LII even though Butler was New England’s top cornerback for reasons that remain unknown.

McCourty did say that the Patriots had a toughness to them that wasn’t appreciated, especially when they played the Steelers.

“It was always a test, I think playing Pittsburgh. In New England, we used to always laugh because we were always seen, it felt like, as the underdog going into the game. ‘Cause the Steelers were more known as the tough team and the tough guys, and we used to always walk out of games like…we’re supposed to be the soft team, but we walked away somehow with a two-touchdown win.”

It surely never felt like the Steelers were ever heavy favorites against Brady and New England, but Belichick had motivated players who convinced themselves that they were actually the underdogs. It led to some crushing losses for the Steelers, and it shows a little bit of the difference between the two teams.

While Mike Tomlin isn’t going to let players get away with anything, Belichick ran a tighter ship in New England, which turned some players off to him. But the results spoke for themselves, and it’s interesting to think about how he would’ve handled the Brown livestream situation.