Not surprisingly, things got ugly between the Steelers and Bengals in their AFC wild-card playoff game Saturday night, but this time, even the fans got in on it.
The crowd behind the south end zone at Paul Brown Stadium began throwing bottles and cans at the officials after Pittsburgh linebacker Ryan Shazier knocked the Bengals' Giovani Bernard out with what appeared to be a helmet-to-helmet hit that was not penalized in the third quarter of Cincinnati’s 18-16 loss.
Bernard left the game and was ruled out under concussion protocol.
As the play was being replayed on the video board, Bengals running back Jeremy Hill went after Shazier, who by then was almost back to the Steelers’ sideline, and a fracas among the teams briefly broke out with Cincinnati linebacker Vontaze Burfict among those joining in. Burfict had been at the center of a pregame fight during warmups of the last matchup between the teams in Cincinnati.
“I was just a little upset they were celebrating it,” Hill said. “Gio works so hard. Seeing him every day, just how hard he works and everything he does for this team, to see someone hit him in the head and for him to be laid out like that and for people to celebrate, I just lost it at that point. That’s not football to me. This game, the integrity of it, is worth more than that.”
The Steelers finished the game with 10 penalties for 142 yards. The Bengals had eight penalties for 79 yards, but it was back-to-back personal fouls on Burfict and Adam Jones on the Steelers’ game-winning drive that proved most costly. Burfict’s penalty came when he hit Antonio Brown in the head with his helmet on a tackle, and Jones was caught in the middle of a scrum of players yelling at each other following the play. That moved the Steelers into position for Chris Boswell’s game-winning 35-yard field goal with 14 seconds left.
When asked what he was talking with Marvin Lewis about after the game, Bufict said, “I was just telling him the (Pittsburgh assistant) coach (Joey Porter) was out there cussing out our guys, that’s why Adam pushed him. He shouldn’t be on the field cussing us out. … The ref heard it, but he threw the flag on Adam.”
The penalties early on were limited mainly to infractions at the line of scrimmage until Pittsburgh offensive line coach Mike Munchak drew the first unsportsmanlike conduct penalty late in the first quarter when he pulled Bengals safety Reggie Nelson’s hair. Nelson had just pushed Jordan Todman out of bounds at the end of a 14-yard carry.
Late in the second quarter, Bengals safety Shawn Williams was flagged with an unnecessary roughness penalty when he and Markus Wheaton collided on a deep pass up the middle. The call led to an outcry on social media that Williams legally hit Wheaton with his shoulder, while Wheaton was lowering his head. The penalty, after the 24-yard catch, moved the Steelers into field goal territory and helped Pittsburgh take a 6-0 lead into halftime.
Cincinnati experienced an unusual number of injuries during the game, but only Bernard’s came on a questionable play. Nelson left the game with an ankle injury after a 10-yard sack on Roethlisberger on third-and-6 from the Bengals’ 36-yard line early in the second quarter. Dre Kirkpatrick left with a quad injury after making a tackle, then later was re-injured.
Roethlisberger went down with a shoulder injury on the last play of the third quarter on a hard, but legal tackle by Burfict on a 12-yard sack, but he returned for the final drive.
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