In the last minute of Sunday’s Steelers-Bengals game, Antonio Brown caught a pass and ran for a 31-yard touchdown that held up as the decisive score: Pittsburgh 28, Cincinnati 21. There’s a strong argument the touchdown should not have counted, though.
The NFL says the Steelers didn’t get away with a penalty on Antonio Brown’s Bengals-beating touchdown
The NFL says Justin Hunter’s key block was legal, but it’s definitely iffy. Officials didn’t call it, and the Steelers won.
Here’s the play. Watch No. 11 for Pittsburgh, receiver Justin Hunter. He’s the guy lined up in the slot, in front and a few steps to the right of No. 84, Brown:
Here’s what Hunter does to free up Brown on a slant route:
It’s important to distinguish what Hunter’s doing here (blocking) from what receivers do all the time on routes over the middle (setting subtle picks while running their routes). There are entire passing concepts built around receivers criss-crossing each other and creating a traffic jam and effectively blocking defenders from following their men. The most famous concept to this effect is “Mesh,” a longtime hit in both the NFL and college football.
Creating traffic in that way is allowed under the rules, which defines those subtle picks as “incidental contact”:
Incidental contact by an opponent’s hands, arms, or body when both players are competing for the ball, or neither player is looking for the ball. If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference.
That’s a difficult distinction to make, though. Hunter isn’t even pretending to run a route. He’s just blocking, reaching out to take Bengals cornerback Tony McRae (No. 29) out of Brown’s way. There are strict but specific rules about offensive players doing that.
The NFL says it’s not a penalty on Hunter, because McRae initiated the contact and, thus, Hunter isn’t responsible for it.
Here’s NFL officiating VP Al Riveron’s explanation:
Both players square up toward the other. It seems like a charitable viewing to say that McRae initiated contact, and not Hunter, who never ran a route and had Brown motioning to just inside his right shoulder before the snap. That is, however, the NFL’s explanation.
Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis, unsurprisingly, doesn’t see it that way — though he’s not dwelling on it.
“The receiver was more than a yard from the line of scrimmage,” said Lewis. “Tony (McRae) was trying to slide inside and was contacted. That defines offensive pass interference. But unless it’s called, it doesn’t matter.”
When Riveron’s explanation was brought up, the Cincinnati head coach dismissed it.
“In my opinion, that’s not true. But again, that doesn’t matter.”
Former NFL referee Terry McAulay, who now works for NBC, says he would have flagged the play if he were on the field and saw it.
Hunter’s block looks illegal to me, even though it started within one yard of the line of scrimmage, where the offense has more freedom.
What the rulebook says about that one-yard window:
It is pass interference by either team when any act by a player more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage significantly hinders an eligible player’s opportunity to catch the ball.
When Hunter starts his block on McRae, they’re about one yard beyond the line. At this point, Hunter’s block remains legal. Officials aren’t going to bring out a measuring stick to see if Hunter’s a few inches beyond the one-yard mark, which he admittedly might be:
So, Hunter’s good, right? Not really, because the rulebook also specifies that offensive pass interference occurs if a player keeps blocking while a pass is in the air and the block happens “in the vicinity” of the target of the pass. What the rules say:
Blocking more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage by an offensive player prior to a pass being thrown is offensive pass interference ...
Note: It is also pass interference by the offense to block a defender beyond the line while the pass is in the air, if the block occurs in the vicinity of the player to whom the pass is thrown. See 8-3-1-Note for exception for ineligible players.
Well, here’s Hunter blocking while the ball’s in the air:
So, yeah: Hunter probably wasn’t allowed to do that, even if Riveron is defending the call.
My view is the Steelers should have lost 10 yards from the previous spot, going back to the Bengals’ 41, where they would have needed another big play to get into Chris Boswell’s field-goal range. It seems farfetched that the corner, not Hunter, started the contact.
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