Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin isn’t hiding his criticism of the officiating following the Steelers 23-20 overtime victory over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday night, and expressed his anger over a call made during the final seconds of regulation.
With time winding down, Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith complete a pass to wide receiver DK Metcalf, but cornerback James Pierre punched the ball out of Metcalf’s hands which led to receiver Freddie Swain recovering it while in bounds and with the clock running.
The Seahawks picked up the ball, rushed to the line of scrimmage, and spiked it with only one second remaining on the clock, at the same time that officials blew their whistles to signal an official review of the previous catch.
Tomlin wasn’t happy about the stoppage for review and let his thoughts be known following the game.
“I hated it,” Tomlin said, according to ESPN’s Brooke Pryor. “I hated it. I cannot believe that game was stopped to confirm catch/no catch in that moment. That’s all I’m going to say.
“It was an embarrassment.”
Officials would go on to rule that it was a catch and there would be three seconds left on the clock instead of one, which allowed Seattle to spike it again and set up a 43-yard field goal for Jason Myers that forced the game to overtime.
“The way we saw it was it needed to be challenged,” Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll said. “And the way they immediately saw it was I think he threw it. That’s what we’re hearing. So I had to go against what they were telling me. And their assessment happened in just a few — you know, 20 seconds or something like that.
“And we see real difficult replays go three, four, five minutes or something like that. Well, I thought this play, if given all of that time, we’d have a chance. And even though they were — the recommendation is you shouldn’t challenge this, I went against it and I threw the flag and stayed with it, you know.”
