The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Chicago needs to win this game tonight just to spite the referees.

I finally watched the controversial call and it's not as big a deal as I thought it was.

So, the Chicago player definitely does "puff up" or flex in a taunting gesture towards the Pitt bench.  It's not like he did nothing.  He did that, but it wasn't egregious and shouldn't have been a penalty, because it wasn't anything major, didn't create any escalation, and just wasn't out of the ordinary.

The punter from Pitt is coming onto the field, so maybe the ref, from his angle, thought the taunt was at that player, which would have been a more justifiable penalty call.

The player then trotted back towards his own bench and the ref had made up his mind that he was making that call.  Then, it's hard to tell what happens.  Either the ref initiated contact because he was "all-in" on the flag and was making a point or that was just a weird accident where the ref is contorting to avoid what he thinks is going to be contact.  Hard to say, but it looks like the ref stuck his butt out.  ...either way, they barely scraped each other so it's relatively minor.

I think the ref just made a bad call and was trying to do some weird dominance-asserting posture, but I don't find this to be a major deal with reprimands and firings and stuff.  It's likely just a case where the NFL needs to look at the rule at the end of the year and make a tweak, because ultimately this shouldn't be a penalty, because it's an overreach.

They also took away a TD on a bs penalty and one play later while Fields was getting sacked, two different defenders face masked him and it wasn't called.  They were at the goal line.  The refs definitely screwed the Bears.

Oh no, I mean the entire  game was skewed by the refs for Pittsburgh. It was like Pittsburgh had their 11 guys on the field, plus all of the refs. It was bad. But I really didn't like that taunting penalty at the end. He wasn't taunting. Plus, you don't need to make that call at te most climactic moment of the game. Some things you can just let go.

There should be no taunting penalties unless it delays gameplay. These are grown ass men making millions of dollars.