(670 The Score) Asked about the controversial officiating in the Bears’ 29-27 loss to the Steelers on Monday night, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk joked the officials must’ve had Pittsburgh -6.5.
Then Florio turned serious.
“They don’t fix games, but this is the kind of stuff that gives people legitimate fodder for thinking that they fix games,” Florio said on the Mully & Haugh Show on Tuesday morning. “They don’t, but stuff like this makes people think it plausibly, that the fix is in.”
The Bears were flagged 12 times for 115 yards, while the Steelers were penalized five times for 30 yards. While a fair portion of the Bears’ penalties were well-deserved, there were also a series of controversial calls that left Chicago upset.
One came in the third quarter, when rookie quarterback Justin Fields’ one-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jimmy Graham was nullified by an illegal low block penalty on Bears offensive lineman James Daniels, who had whiffed on his block and also appeared to be legally inside the tight end box in the event he did make contact. The Bears soon settled for a field goal.
On multiple occasions, Fields was hit hard around the head and arguably late but didn’t get the benefit of a roughing-the-passer penalty on the Steelers. And with just under 3:40 remaining, Bears linebacker Cassius Marsh was flagged for a questionable 15-yard taunting penalty – after head referee Tony Corrente bizarrely backed his way into contact with Marsh as the latter ran off the field. Marsh called it a “hip check” from Corrente that was “incredibly inappropriate.”
Because of that penalty, the Steelers ended up getting a field goal to take a 26-20 lead late instead of punting, and those three points proved crucial.
“One thing they’ve learned in recent years, when there is a controversial decision, what you do is you cite what the rule is and then you say that what happened fell within the terms or what the rule does or doesn’t allow in very conclusory fashion with no facts, no context and no accuracy,” Florio said. “And (Corrente) did that with the low block call that was horrendous. He said, ‘Oh, there was contact made outside the tackle box.’ And there’ wasn’t.
There wasn’t. And with the taunting, he said that Cassius Marsh ran toward the (Steelers) bench. He didn’t run toward the bench. Look, is it in the gray area? Yes. But that’s the problem. When you allow officiating to happen in the gray area, subjectivity creeps into it. And the more subjectivity, the more fodder for people to wonder whether the fix is in.
“And that stupid hip check, I don’t know what that was. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I didn’t even notice it in real time because it’s nothing that our brains are naturally wired to look for from an official.”
Florio believes the taunting rules need to be adjusted to be more lax.
“The line that they have set up is not acceptable, and they really need to do something about it,” Florio said.