The Steelers escaped Ford Field with a 29-24 victory over the Lions, taking a huge step closer to securing their first AFC North title in five years. However, all anyone will be talking about for the foreseeable future will be how the game ended.
The Lions faced fourth-and-goal at the Pittsburgh 9-yard line with 0:08 remaining on the clock. Neither team had timeouts. The game came down to one final play. Jared Goff received the snap out of the shotgun, dropped back, looked to his left and fired a pass to his No. 1 receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who caught the pass just short of the goal line.
Joey Porter Jr. and Jalen Ramsey converged on St. Brown and not only kept him out of the end zone, but shoved him back a few yards, stopping his forward progress. But before he went to the ground, well, just see for yourself:
Yeah, that's Goff receiving a desperation pitch from St. Brown, then running past Steelers defenders thinking the play was over and leaping into the end zone, sending Ford Field into a frenzy.
However, the whole play didn't matter. Before St. Brown could even pitch the ball to Goff, two officials had thrown flags in the direction of the catch. After the play was over, the officials gathered and discussed the play for at least a couple of minutes.
"I was trying to read (NFL Referee) Carl (Cheffers)'s lips and see what he was saying," Aaron Rodgers said after the game. "I saw him mouth, 'OPI. End of the game.' So, I felt pretty confident that was what was going to happen."
The officials called offensive pass interference on St. Brown for creating unfair separation against Ramsey before the pass got there. And, based on the way the rule is written and the precedent set earlier in the game on other OPI calls, this was a no brainer:
Cheffer was asked after the game to clear up why the flag was thrown and, more importantly, why it took so long for the officials to work through it before announcing the call.
"It is a pretty complex play," Cheffer said in the PFWA pool report. "We had the original player who had the ball, lose possession of the ball. So, we had to decide if that was a fumble or a backwards pass because of course we have restrictions on the recovery of a fumble inside of two minutes. We ruled that it was a backward pass, so the recovering player was able to advance it and that recovering player advanced it for a touchdown. We had to rule on that and then because of the offensive pass interference, it negates the touchdown. Because it is an offensive foul, we do not extend the half. Therefore, there is no score and there is no replay of the down. That’s the way the rule is written."
When these types of plays happen, so much of the attention gets thrown on whether or not the officials decided the game. The word "controversial" has already been tied to this play in many other places online. Based on all the evidence, the only thing that could possibly be controversial is if you disagree with the call of offensive pass interference. Otherwise, there's no controversy at all, despite Dan Campbell not liking the way it was handled.
"I don't even want to get into it. Because it's not going to change anything, we still lost," Campbell said. "You think you score, you don't score, and then you think you're going to have another play. Replay it or back it up, one more shot. And it doesn't. I guess that's the way it's written in the rulebook. So that's frustrating. But there again, it should never come to that. We had our opportunities. We weren’t able to put it in before that play."
That's really what this all comes down to. Forget the Steelers putting up a season-high 481 yards or the defense nearly blowing a 29-17 lead with less than five minutes remaining. Ultimately, the game came down to the final sequence that began with the Lions getting first-and-goal at the Pittsburgh 1-yard line with just 41 seconds remaining.
The Lions appeared to go ahead with a 1-yard touchdown pass from Goff to St. Brown with just 22 seconds left. However, Isaac TeSlaa was called for offensive pass interference, clearly picking Kyle Dugger, screening him like he and St. Brown were trying to run a pick-and-roll in a basketball game.
The penalty backed the Lions up to the Pittsburgh 11, then a false start called on center Kingsley Eguakun backed them up even further to the 16-yard line. Just like that, the Lions went from first-and-goal at the 1-yard line to first-and-goal at the 16.
Goff completed a pass to Jahmyr Gibbs on first down for a 7-yard gain to make things a little easier for the Lions. However, with the pass being completed over the middle, Campbell was forced to use his third and final timeout to stop the clock with 16 seconds remaining. Now, the Lions had to take shots at the end zone. Nothing could be stopped short and in bounds, otherwise the clock could run out on them.
The Steelers then played a lot of zone coverage, dropping seven or eight players into coverage to blanket the entire end zone. The strategy paid off as Goff missed on a pass intended for Jameson Williams on second-and-goal from the 9-yard line, then TeSlaa failed to come down with what would have been a sensational catch on third-and-goal, but Chuck Clark was tight in coverage to make it as difficult as possible. That all led to the fourth-down play above.
The Steelers walking away from this with a win isn't luck or some sort of fix by the referees. In fact, they prepare for these moments throughout the year with their seven-shots drill in practice.
For those who don't know, seven shots is a drill in which Mike Tomlin has the offense face the defense in two-point conversion situations, usually starting with the No. 1 offense against the No. 1 defense, then allows the backups to come in after a few reps. Either way, they run seven of these plays, and they keep score of who wins the most reps. It's a very popular part of training camp and becomes a measuring stick -- fair or unfair -- for how each side of the ball is doing.
The goal of seven shots is to prepare both sides of the ball to be best equipped for plays down in the low red-zone. That's why, no matter how bleak the situation looked, the defense never lost confidence.
"We live by that and we die by that," Porter said after the game. "We weren't really shocked or nervous in those situations. We had each other's back to just go make a play."
THE ASYLUM
The Big Play: Standing tall in wild finish
The Steelers escaped Ford Field with a 29-24 victory over the Lions, taking a huge step closer to securing their first AFC North title in five years. However, all anyone will be talking about for the foreseeable future will be how the game ended.
The Lions faced fourth-and-goal at the Pittsburgh 9-yard line with 0:08 remaining on the clock. Neither team had timeouts. The game came down to one final play. Jared Goff received the snap out of the shotgun, dropped back, looked to his left and fired a pass to his No. 1 receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who caught the pass just short of the goal line.
Joey Porter Jr. and Jalen Ramsey converged on St. Brown and not only kept him out of the end zone, but shoved him back a few yards, stopping his forward progress. But before he went to the ground, well, just see for yourself:
Yeah, that's Goff receiving a desperation pitch from St. Brown, then running past Steelers defenders thinking the play was over and leaping into the end zone, sending Ford Field into a frenzy.
However, the whole play didn't matter. Before St. Brown could even pitch the ball to Goff, two officials had thrown flags in the direction of the catch. After the play was over, the officials gathered and discussed the play for at least a couple of minutes.
"I was trying to read (NFL Referee) Carl (Cheffers)'s lips and see what he was saying," Aaron Rodgers said after the game. "I saw him mouth, 'OPI. End of the game.' So, I felt pretty confident that was what was going to happen."
The officials called offensive pass interference on St. Brown for creating unfair separation against Ramsey before the pass got there. And, based on the way the rule is written and the precedent set earlier in the game on other OPI calls, this was a no brainer:
Cheffer was asked after the game to clear up why the flag was thrown and, more importantly, why it took so long for the officials to work through it before announcing the call.
"It is a pretty complex play," Cheffer said in the PFWA pool report. "We had the original player who had the ball, lose possession of the ball. So, we had to decide if that was a fumble or a backwards pass because of course we have restrictions on the recovery of a fumble inside of two minutes. We ruled that it was a backward pass, so the recovering player was able to advance it and that recovering player advanced it for a touchdown. We had to rule on that and then because of the offensive pass interference, it negates the touchdown. Because it is an offensive foul, we do not extend the half. Therefore, there is no score and there is no replay of the down. That’s the way the rule is written."
When these types of plays happen, so much of the attention gets thrown on whether or not the officials decided the game. The word "controversial" has already been tied to this play in many other places online. Based on all the evidence, the only thing that could possibly be controversial is if you disagree with the call of offensive pass interference. Otherwise, there's no controversy at all, despite Dan Campbell not liking the way it was handled.
"I don't even want to get into it. Because it's not going to change anything, we still lost," Campbell said. "You think you score, you don't score, and then you think you're going to have another play. Replay it or back it up, one more shot. And it doesn't. I guess that's the way it's written in the rulebook. So that's frustrating. But there again, it should never come to that. We had our opportunities. We weren’t able to put it in before that play."
That's really what this all comes down to. Forget the Steelers putting up a season-high 481 yards or the defense nearly blowing a 29-17 lead with less than five minutes remaining. Ultimately, the game came down to the final sequence that began with the Lions getting first-and-goal at the Pittsburgh 1-yard line with just 41 seconds remaining.
The Lions appeared to go ahead with a 1-yard touchdown pass from Goff to St. Brown with just 22 seconds left. However, Isaac TeSlaa was called for offensive pass interference, clearly picking Kyle Dugger, screening him like he and St. Brown were trying to run a pick-and-roll in a basketball game.
The penalty backed the Lions up to the Pittsburgh 11, then a false start called on center Kingsley Eguakun backed them up even further to the 16-yard line. Just like that, the Lions went from first-and-goal at the 1-yard line to first-and-goal at the 16.
Goff completed a pass to Jahmyr Gibbs on first down for a 7-yard gain to make things a little easier for the Lions. However, with the pass being completed over the middle, Campbell was forced to use his third and final timeout to stop the clock with 16 seconds remaining. Now, the Lions had to take shots at the end zone. Nothing could be stopped short and in bounds, otherwise the clock could run out on them.
The Steelers then played a lot of zone coverage, dropping seven or eight players into coverage to blanket the entire end zone. The strategy paid off as Goff missed on a pass intended for Jameson Williams on second-and-goal from the 9-yard line, then TeSlaa failed to come down with what would have been a sensational catch on third-and-goal, but Chuck Clark was tight in coverage to make it as difficult as possible. That all led to the fourth-down play above.
The Steelers walking away from this with a win isn't luck or some sort of fix by the referees. In fact, they prepare for these moments throughout the year with their seven-shots drill in practice.
For those who don't know, seven shots is a drill in which Mike Tomlin has the offense face the defense in two-point conversion situations, usually starting with the No. 1 offense against the No. 1 defense, then allows the backups to come in after a few reps. Either way, they run seven of these plays, and they keep score of who wins the most reps. It's a very popular part of training camp and becomes a measuring stick -- fair or unfair -- for how each side of the ball is doing.
The goal of seven shots is to prepare both sides of the ball to be best equipped for plays down in the low red-zone. That's why, no matter how bleak the situation looked, the defense never lost confidence.
"We live by that and we die by that," Porter said after the game. "We weren't really shocked or nervous in those situations. We had each other's back to just go make a play."
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