The Pittsburgh Steelers played an awful game. Mike Tomlin’s performance was just as bad as those who took the field. One of Tomlin’s several questionable decisions came late in the game, accepting an illegal-touching penalty to turn a 4th and 2 into a 3rd and 7.
It was a confusing sequence, the refs taking time to determine the penalty and the Steelers flip-flopping between accepting and declining it. After the officials announced multiple times that Tomlin had declined it, he changed his mind and accepted the penalty, pushing the Browns back five yards but giving them a third down re-do.
Cleveland converted, QB Jameis Winston hitting WR Jerry Jeudy for a 15-yard catch by the left sideline. Two plays later, RB Nick Chubb took the ball over the goal line for the game-winning score. Speaking to reporters after the Steelers’ 24-19 loss, Tomlin explained what happened.
“I thought it was a grounding,” Tomlin told reporters after the game via the team site. “Initially, I couldn’t hear the officials. I thought it was a grounding. When I realized that it wasn’t ruled the grounding, I got information from them and made the call that we wanted to make.
“The distance was more important to us. If it wasn’t grounding, we wanted to move them five yards back. They were potentially kicking into the wind and so we wanted to stop ’em, man, and make the field goal a longer one.”
The initial sequence seemed to point to intentional grounding on Winston, who threw the ball to no one in particular to avoid a sack from LB Patrick Queen. But the refs ruled there was no grounding and that an offensive lineman had illegally been the first to touch the ball. A five-yard penalty and no loss of downs unlike the more consequential grounding call.
Tucked away in all of that was Tomlin using his second timeout of the half ahead of the Browns’ third-down conversion. After they scored and took a five-point lead, the Steelers were left with just 50 seconds and one timeout to try and go 64 yards. They moved the ball into Browns’ territory, but an end-game Hail Mary woefully failed.
Though the Browns were having success on fourth down, it’s hard to accept Tomlin’s answer. Had the Browns thrown incomplete on third down, the field goal would’ve been challenging. For a Steelers pass rush that struggled throughout the night, sans one great play by Nick Herbig, giving the Browns at least one chance and possibly two wasn’t advisable. Pittsburgh made player and coaching mistakes throughout the game’s biggest moments. This one helped seal the win for Cleveland.
