On the Pittsburgh Steelers’ first drive of the second half, leading 16-7, Pittsburgh Steelers QB Aaron Rodgers threw an incompletion on 3rd-and-8. But it was clear that the officiating crew, led by referee Shawn Hochuli, missed an offside penalty.
Rodgers was looking for a call after the play, and the officials briefly huddled but didn’t throw a flag. The Steelers were forced to punt. Green Bay then connected on a 59-yard explosive pass to TE Tucker Kraft on third down that set up an eventual touchdown to cut the lead to 16-14. From there, the Packers went on to outscore Pittsburgh 21-11 in their 35-25 win. After the game, Rodgers called the missed offsides a “big momentum turn” in Green Bay’s favor.
“It felt good. It was 16-7, we had a nice drive there at the end of the first half, and this didn’t decide the game, but there was the one play where, I don’t know, it seemed like the guy was offside on 3rd-and-8. Didn’t come up with a catch, they didn’t make a penalty call, and then we punt it, and they hit a kind of wild play to 85 to kind of get back in the game. That was a big momentum turn in the game,” Rodgers said in his postgame press conference via the team website.
It was clearly a missed call by the officials, and they also missed a push-off by Kraft on the play on Green Bay’s next drive.
The Steelers could’ve extended their drive with a third-and-short after a solid drive to end the first half. Instead, it stalled out, and Green Bay took advantage and never stopped. The Steelers needed to be better on offense and defense, and those two plays shouldn’t be seen as the reason they lost. They still got the ball back, leading 16-14, and settled for a field goal. Green Bay’s offense followed it up with a touchdown drive to take a lead they never relinquished.
Neither side of the ball was good enough for the Steelers tonight. The offense settled for too many field goals, and the defense, particularly in the second half, was a disaster trying to stop Love, who finished with 360 yards and three scores through the air. But it surely doesn’t help when missed calls take away a chance to extend a drive, possibly put points on the board, and help put points on the board for the other team. That sequence was where the game started to get away from the Steelers.
But a good football team shouldn’t let an officiating mistake or two control the outcome. The Steelers never recovered their momentum after that. They didn’t look like the same team, and while injuries to Isaac Seumalo and DeShon Elliott played a role, it wasn’t a good enough performance by any means from Pittsburgh.
