The play that will probably be most remembered from the Pittsburgh Steelers’ blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles was the play that resulted in a scuffle in the back of the end zone and two 15-yard penalty flags thrown against the Steelers. It had a little bit of everything. Despite Najee Harris’ electrifying leap and Darnell Washington’s thunderous 15-yard block, this play will be remembered for the chaos that followed—a scuffle that sparked controversy and questionable officiating.
It not only likely took away four additional points from the Steelers, but it also fired up the Eagles’ defense. It was an eventful and impactful few minutes during the game.
HBO’s Hard Knocks gave us a couple additional pieces of information to add more intrigue to the play and how it was handled by the players, coaches and referees.
The biggest (Darnell Washington) and smallest (Calvin Austin III) players on the Steelers’ entire roster were the two that ended up with penalty flags, but there were at least a dozen players involved in the scuffle. One that came to the aid of Washington was his former college teammate, OT Broderick Jones.
As Jones was inserting himself into the middle of the scuffle, Russell Wilson came rushing in to prevent Jones from escalating the situation.
“Brod, be smart, we need you,” Wilson said a handful of times as he physically put himself in between Jones and some of the Eagles’ players to diffuse the situation.
Zach Frazier tried to pull him out of the crowd, but Jones broke free and went back in once again. Jones was not among those penalized, but perhaps his teammates prevented a bad situation from getting worse. Darius Slay said after the game that he was expecting some possible ejections with the way things were trending in that scuffle.
Hard Knocks then cut to veteran down judge Derick Bowers talking to Mike Tomlin to explain the penalties.
“We have two fouls. One against 80, white, one against 19, white,” Bowers said. “So we’re gonna go 15 yards from the dead-ball spot, second down.”
“Both of them against us?” Tomlin asked. “Y’all didn’t see that guy throwing punches for Philadelphia?”
“They said that they was knocking his hands off of him. That he didn’t throw [punches],” Bowers responded as the scene cut away mid sentence.
In his postgame press conference, Tomlin said that the explanation he received was “not sufficient” and referred the media to ask the referee during the pool report. The ref gave a similar (bad) explanation stating that they didn’t see any punches.
The most frustrating aspect is that replay assist got involved and reached the same conclusion after reviewing the footage. Here’s the pool report from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Brian Batko after the game as well as a video from LERS on X for you to decide for yourself.
This play will be remembered for all the wrong reasons instead of the amazing 15-yard block that Washington made and the exciting leap that Harris made to get the Steelers within the five-yard line.
