The Steelers must put an ugly loss in the rearview mirror with their upcoming matchup against the Tennessee Titans fast approaching on Thursday Night, but the way the game transpired may make it difficult to get the bad taste of the Jags’ game out of their mouths.
The big storyline coming out of Pittsburgh’s 20-10 loss at home for Pittsburgh revolved around the officiating crew and its perceived favoritism for the Jaguars, with plenty of calls going against Pittsburgh at the most inopportune moments. Steve Palazzolo and Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus talked about the refs and their impact on the game in their Week Eight Review show, calling out one particular call/no-call situation that still comes off as bizarre to non-Steelers fans watching from home.
“The explanation is clearly incompetence rather than corruption, but this is the type of game that drives people insane, not just because it was bad, but it was inconsistent bad and it tended to favor one team,” Monson said of the officiating. “Just in similar contrasting plays. There is a bad roughing the passer call against Pittsburgh, as in they called them for roughing the passer on a play where it really shouldn’t have been. And then, there’s a play with Kenny Pickett gettting hurt in a literally like teaching tape, textbook version of the thing you’re not allowed to do anymore, which is drive the quarterback into the turf.”
The play that Monson calls a bad roughing the passer penalty came against S Keanu Neal when he hit QB Trevor Lawrence as he threw the ball, striking Lawrence in the midsection with his helmet off to the side. Neal wrapped up Lawrence and let off the gas as he released the football, taking him down to the ground and receiving a flag after the fact.
Meanwhile, the Jaguars didn’t receive a roughing-the-passer call on this hit below from DL Adam Gotsis on QB Kenny Pickett. Gotsis wraps up Pickett well after the ball has been thrown and proceeds to drive his left shoulder into Pickett as he pile drives Pittsburgh’s quarterback into the ground. He puts all of his weight into Pickett, who ends up leaving the game with a rib injury. His status is currently up in the air for Pittsburgh’s Thursday Night matchup against the Titans.
“That one not roughing the passer, the one before when infinitely less bad, roughing the passer. Both of them went against Pittsburgh and one of them cost them their quarterback,” Monson said.
When you look at the two plays side-by-side, you do see an egregious error make by the officiating crew calling Neal’s hit on Lawrence a roughing-the-passer penalty, but not flagging Gotsis’ hit on Pickett. You can put your fandom aside and see that one hit violates the rules to a greater extent than the other. Neal tried to pull up as Lawrence threw the pass where Gotsis planted Pickett into the ground with his full bodyweight, leading to an injury.
The roughing-the-passer call has been heavily scrutinized in recent seasons, and for good reason. There needs to be some sort of consistency between officiating crews, finding that balance between getting flag happy at the smallest hit on the quarterback and allowing people to get hurt, like what happened to Pickett. It’s a frustrating string of events that has Steelers’ faithful irate the day after the game, but this team must move on and do so quickly with the Titans coming to town in three days.
