Patriots' Dont'a Hightower doesn't care what Mike Tomlin thinks of his team

In case you hadn’t heard, Pittsburgh Steelers All-Pro receiver Antonio Brown got himself in hot water late Sunday night when he used Facebook Live to broadcast the scene in the Steelers’ locker room after the team’s divisional-round playoff win against the Kansas City Chiefs.

In the video, Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin calls the Patriots a-holes as he notes that New England has a 36-hour head start on preparations for the AFC championship game, since New England played Saturday night at home and the Steelers wouldn’t get back to western Pennsylvania from Kansas City until early Monday morning.

The video of course drew a ton of attention, though it should be for Brown’s misguided decision to record the raucous scene and make it available unedited to the masses, and not for what Tomlin said; the Steelers, like most teams, likely had an in-house video crew in the room, but that part where Tomlin shares his true feelings on the Patriots would have been taken out before it went out to the public.

While there was some pearl-clutching over Tomlin’s word choice, at least one Patriots player wasn’t bothered in the least.

“I don’t care,” linebacker Dont’a Hightower said on Boston radio station WEEI on Monday. “Is that supposed to hurt my feelings?”

While Hightower took something of a high road, his teammate, receiver Julian Edelman, took a bit of a swipe at the Steelers when he was interviewed on WEEI about Brown’s broadcasting.

“Hey, people have different rules,” Edelman said. “That’s how that team is run. I personally don’t think that would be something that would happen in our locker room, but hey whatever. Some people like red and some people like blue. Some people like tulips and some people like roses, whatever.”

Edelman added he wouldn’t have done what Brown did because “I’d be more worried about just trying to celebrate with my teammates and keeping it internal.”

Hightower and the Patriots defense have bigger things to worry about on Sunday night, namely keeping Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell and Brown in check. Roethlisberger did not play when the teams met in the regular season, as he was dealing with a knee injury.

Bell had 149 yards from scrimmage on 21 carries and 10 receptions, while Brown had seven catches for 106 yards. Neither scored in the Patriots’ 27-16 win.