I'm not buying it

"That statement isn't far-fetched. The Steelers reminded why they entered the season with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations. They burned a good defense for 429 yards behind the arm of Ben Roethlisberger. They sacked Drew Brees twice, stopped the Saints three times in the second half and held the Alvin Kamara-Mark Ingram rushing tandem to 58 yards on the ground."

http://www.espn.com/blog/pittsburgh...ent-from-super-bowl-contenders-to-browns-fans

The Saints game was scripted. The Steelers were going to lose it. The penalties called makes this obvious.

We're supposed to read that because the Steelers couldn't manage their penalties they beat themselves.

I call that BS.

Either the ref had money on New Orleans or one of the Steelers players are messing with his wife.

Or the Illuminati have become Saints fans.

Only logical explanations.

I'm not all butthurt over the loss because this league has become complete BS. Hard to take it seriously anymore.

These are my Christmas thoughts LMAO

 

Looking at that first penalty really brings stuff like this to the forefront.

The Saints were having trouble getting their offense on track in the last 2 games they played and now the Steelers had stopped them on their first drive and looking to get great field position up by 3 already. That tends to get teams out of what they want to do for the game early. So an absolute BS call of PI is made on a desperate throw away attempt.

Puts them at the 1 and puts the Steelers defense on its heels because, here's another bogus call we have to deal with on top of playing our game to our best. That stuff gets in your head, don't think it doesn't.

That end of game Illegal Contact was suspect as well. Ref throws the flag, they consult and come away with Contact not PI so they don't get the favorable field position and they have to keep pushing to get in range.

 

No, it doesn’t it. Haden pushed off. It mighthave been minor, but it was a penalty nonetheless.

I can’t believe we are back to boycotts and stupid conspiracies yet once again.

 

None of your conspiracy matters if a certain Coach plays his healthy Hall of Fame quarterback in the second half of the Oakland game instead of the back up because of the "flow of the game," whatever the hell that means. So unless he's in on the conspiracy too, there's nothing to it.

There are a lot of reasons for this wasted season, but the Oakland game will be the biggest. And that game is solely on Mike Tomlin and not the Illuminati.

 

Yeah pretty much exactly right. Bad calls happen. And sometimes you really get burned. But the best defense for that is to put yourself in a position where they can't hurt you. It comes down to the Oakland game. The second half in particular. If Tomlin plays a healthy Ben, the Steelers probably win that game and Sunday's bad calls don't matter.

 

So, Haden pushed off, but the call on Vance was what? Oh yeah, Illegal Contact...right....

 

I mean...


None of this would have made any difference had the Steelers defeated the Broncos. For that matter, the Steelers not getting swept by a division within their schedule no less. Going 0-4 against conference based opponents usually does you little to no favors....



... That and consistently underestimating your opponents.

 

I think referees just suck ass at there jobs.. That's all. No conspiracies

 

This Ref crew were the same ones we had when we played the Chargers ..... Just saying

 

Cant blame the refs for us being unable to finish games because we just hang close and never finish and getting swept by a weak afc west division speaks volumes:

https://triblive.com/sports/columni...madden-steelers-dont-deserve-to-make-playoffs

 

Refs suck

 

Refs aren’t doing anything the NFL brass don’t want. Ticky tack fouls keep drives going and lead to more points. College football is officiated better. You cannot defend without touching receivers. It’s ludicrous. Lawsuits from former players factors in as well.

 

I get tired of NFL saying that their concern is the fans getting bored with too many delays like college football.
I have already devoted the day to watch the game. This weekends college games won't take any longer than a NFL game and they will get the calls correct and allow the coaches to coach and NOT worry about challenges. Why won't the NFL change???? Because it wasn't their idea....period. They don't want to admit that the college replay is better. Just simple pride thing. Sad.

Is there really fans out there who worry about the length of a game? If the competition committee changes anything the off season, it should adopt the college replay system. NFL's is a joke with too many things that cannot be challenged. New York can review fights and boot players, then they should be able to review bad calls.

 

Indeed. If that’s the case, it sort of flies in the face of liking to make calls to benefit the home team. If I try to remove my homer glasses, we beat the Pats and a lot of penalties were called on the Pats. But were they of the variety where everyone impartial was talking about how bad they were the day after? I understand the conspiracy talk when the same back judge who somehow misses an obvious block in the back on a Chargers TD calls Pittsburgh for the same penalty 2 kickoffs later....it can certainly seem like at a minimum they’re getting ready to pull a flag out against certain teams and are looking harder for something to call. Are they? Maybe not, but there seems to be a terrible lack of accountability. And maybe it’s happened, but have there been times since SB XL where the impartial talk has been how the bad calls all favored the Steelers? I dunno, but if gets frustrating where every week it takes the right combination of bad calls, weird coaching decisions, and poor execution at just the wrong time to just barely lose. And accountability is escaped week after week because well... “that’s not the reason we lost the game....”

 

He didn't push off. He rested his hand on the guy's back. Hand checking like that is allowed. It was a horrible call that handed the Saints a touchdown.

The crap about the game being fixed is utterly ridiculous, but there is no doubt that the officials' incompetence was a major factor in the Steelers' loss.

 

Ugh. That's just going to add to the conspiracy theories. My theory is simply that crew sucks and the Steelers had the bad fortune to be screwed by their incompetence twice.

I don't buy for a second that the game was fixed. Is it possible that crew is aware of all the criticism after the Chargers game and weren't happy about that and maybe that influenced a few close calls going the Saints' way? That I could buy, but it's a tough sell without evidence. I'll stick with my original idea. That entire crew cost the Steelers two games with its incompetence, especially the missed false starts by the Chargers. The Saints pulled some of the same crap Sunday. The entire crew should be fired.

 

I just said they were the same crew ,

 

I had a comment but couldn't take my eyes off the pic you use , then my train of thought got derailed like our season,maybe its a lack of focus.

 

Was it "bad fortune"? How are crew assignments made? Wouldn't it makes sense to NOT have the same crew officiate a game against a team that where it had such obvious failures before? Are the crew schedules made at the same time as the team schedule? Couldn't they be "flexed" to another game?

I don't buy into the conspiracy theory (much), but placing an officiating crew known for certain behaviors certainly seems like slanting things in one direction or the other.

 

Honestly I see a time when all calls will be done using AI and there will be no Refs on the field at all

 

And people won't like the results any better than they do now. Calls go against the home teams, and fans will scream the Goddell or Kraft or the Trilateral Commision has hacked the AI.

 

haha.. so very true.. Always going to be talk of cheating and games being rigged. I just cannot believe that the refs have a vested interest in the outcome nor would they care either way.