Officiating questionable in Steelers narrow victory vs Bears

The Pittsburgh Steelers won their fourth straight game of the season, but it didn’t come without a few very questionable calls. 

Steelers fans were hoping their team would advance to their fourth straight win of the 2021 season against the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football. While Pittsburgh held the lead almost the entire game, this turned out to be a nail-biter late in the fourth quarter.

Through three quarters, Mike Tomlin’s team held a 20-6 lead, but Justin Fields and the Bears offense turned it on late in the game and rallied back — scoring 21 fourth-quarter points. Ultimately, Chicago took the lead in the game with just under two minutes remaining.

However, Ben Roethlisberger was able to hit Diontae Johnson in a slant to put the Steelers in field goal range on their final position. With the clutch kick, the Steelers regained the lead and advanced to 5-3 on the season with a 29-27 win.

Ray-Ray McCloud made a devastating mistake early in the fourth quarter when he coughed up the football on a return that was scooped up by the Bears for a touchdown. Sadly, it wasn’t just that play that had football fans in a tizzy on social media. Many — including the Monday Night Football crew — questioned the officiating in this contest.

Did poor officiating change help the Steelers win?

While we all have our biases, it was easy to see that there were a few big head-scratching calls in this contest. One of the biggest happened to be a play in which a bears offensive lineman was called for going low on T.J. Watt — a play where he whiffed on the Steelers defender entirely. Even if he had connected with Watt on this play, he wasn’t outside of the tight end box — meaning this would have been legal.

This very play wiped away a Jimmy Graham touchdown in the back corner of the endzone after Justin Fields extended the play. The Bears would settle for a field goal on this drive.

The other very questionable play came when former Steelers edge defender, Cassius Marsh, was called for taunting. After multiple replays, it was really hard to see what the official saw in this situation. Though the referee was close to Marsh and could have heard him say something that warranted a penalty, it certainly didn’t look like taunting.

In fact, there are some who are arguing on Twitter that the referee intentionally backed into Marsh to have a reason to throw a flag that he was already grasping with his right hand. The video evidence does seem suspicious. Instead of being forced to punt, this highly questionable call gave Pittsburgh a fresh set of downs late in the game.

By the end of the game, the Bears had committed 12 penalties for 115 yards, according to ESPN. Whereas the Steelers were penalized just 5 times for 30 yards. Some of these penalties from Chicago were obvious and indisputable — a sheer lack of discipline, really. However, others were very questionable, to say the least.

If a few calls had gone the other way in this contest or if flags weren’t thrown on some very iffy penalties, the Steelers could be looking at fourth place in the AFC North right now with a 4-4 record. But sometimes this is just how things go in football. As a fan, I’d much rather see Pittsburgh take down Chicago on their own turf without all of the controversies, but I suppose a win is a win, and the Steelers are now well within striking distance in their division.