Brad Rogers and his crew will be the officials for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ matchup with the Cincinnati Bengals at Paycor Stadium on Sunday, per footballzebras.com.
Rogers began his career as a field judge in 2017 before becoming a referee in 2019. This season, he’s only worked one game involving an AFC North team, a Week Seven Baltimore Ravens win over the Detroit Lions. He worked the Steelers’ Week Three loss against the New York Jets last season, the game in which Kenny Pickett made his NFL debut.
This season, Rogers’ crew has called 67 penalties on the visiting team compared to 65 on the home team. The crew calls 13.20 penalties per game, which is higher than the league average of 12.29 penalties per game. Of those penalties, 33 have been offensive holding. However, 20 offensive holding penalties have been called against the home team compared to just 13 against the visitors, per NFLpenalties.com. We’ll see if OLB T.J. Watt can be a beneficiary of those calls.
Rogers’ crew has also called nine defensive holding penalties on the home team compared to two on the road team. The 13 offensive holding penalties are the most penalties his crew has called on the road team, and they’ve also called 1o of their 16 false starts on the road team, which tracks given that teams on the road are more likely to have issues with leaving early due to crowd noise.
It should be an evenly officiated game by the looks of how Rogers’ crew has called games this season, and hopefully the Steelers can get back on track and win against a Bengals team starting backup quarterback Jake Browning. The Steelers are coming off a 10-3 loss on Sunday against the Cleveland Browns, while Cincinnati comes into the game off a 34-20 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday Night Football. That is the game where they lost QB Joe Burrow for the season due to a wrist injury.
