I don’t know if any of you Steeler fans are in the Pittsburgh viewing area. Of course this has been a hot topic on local radio and tv. Here are some perspectives of two people who were at the game:
IMO: This is embarrassing. Tomlin got what he deserved. Baltimore should have been awarded a touchdown. I think it’s not at all certain that Jones would have scored, in fact I think Lewis had the angle on him to knock him out of bounds and I might argue that Tomlin “pushing” Jones back toward the middle might have given him a few more yards as Lewis could have just pushed him out of bounds instead of dragging him down.
Also, do we not remember when Cowher almost stepped out on the field to stop a blocked FG return, shaking his fist at the guy after lunging toward the field? That, I think, was more grievous as it was clearly intentional.
Unless he had somewhere to go, why on earth would he walk while watching the Jumbotron? A vast majority of times I’ve seen players watching it, and from my own experience, walking somewhere without a purpose and watching a Jumbotron are pretty mutually exclusive.
It certainly looked like a single sidestep right to a spot he intended to go to? Why was it just one step? Why did he just happen to stop there? Why wasn’t he going up and down the sidelines and instead going right to the edge of the play? It’s as silly as a NFL coach claiming to be “mesmerized” by a huge TV screen that he’s seen for years and for 2.5 quarters of play that very day. The whole “I was just wandering around, watching the Jumbotron, which no one does, and I just so happened to take my last step sideways and right to the spot where I could influence the play. Silly me” is just ridiculous to me.
I think it was simply an opportunity to act out something he’s thought about before. It’s what NFL coaches do. If ______ happens, I can __________. In this case, he’s down by one score in a big game and the other team is heading for a TD. It makes much more sense than Good Old Wanderin’ Mike.
You saw what sense it made because it worked. Jones didn’t get the touchdown, in part because of Tomlin’s actions. I don’t see how you can find it so non-sensical when it worked as it should. And, again, the calculation wasn’t done in those three seconds, it was done well before.
I’ve been to a game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington recently (actually, it was called Cowboys Stadium at the time). That’s not where the Tomlin incident occurred, obviously, but I’m only addressing video screen delay in general.
The delay in the video on the big screen must be nonzero, of course, but it’s so small as to be imperceptible when watching the action from the stands. From the upper deck you can easily see both the screen and live action in the same field of view (and the screen’s image appears considerably larger!).
This video is of a soccer game played in that facility, but it’s pretty clear that the video delay is extremely small.
I don’t think he did it on purpose, but I also don’t understand why there isn’t a rule for this.
He stepped onto the field right in front of a player. There is no question about it. So why not award the touchdown?
I’ve heard the real problem might be that it takes away from the integrity of the sport as an avenue for gambling. Awarding the touchdown seems like a fair response in the context of the game, but perhaps not in the context of gambling.
Then too, I guess there are situations where you would want the other team to score a touchdown really fast instead of running out the clock, so there could be an issue of abusing such a rule?
For someone who doesn’t like to quibble, you sure do a lot of it.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Marley, do you even read what you type? Of course, you are right… We did have some idea of what was going to happen in that game. Either the Steelers would have won, the Ravens would have won, or it would have finished in a tie. That’s all we knew at the point of the game in which this happened.
The game, first of all wasn’t “almost 75% over”. The play in question happened with 6:16 left to go in the 3rd quarter. Almost half of the 3rd quarter was left. (i’ll leave it to you to work out the actual %, but pretending the 3rd quarter was almost over is incorrect.). And saying you can make informed statements about likelihoods is gibberish. Because to say the game was “likely to go in X direction” or “Y direction” is nice, but it’s pointless. The real issue is how did the game end vs. How it might have ended if the play didn’t occur as it did. And the answer to that is “We don’t know.” But to say that Tomlin negatively impacted the game for the Ravens is completely wrong. Because the only way that would have happened is if the Ravens lost. They won. So by definition, Tomlin didn’t have a negative impact on the game for the Ravens.
Really? 2:37 would have made no difference? A team couldn’t score once or twice in a 2:37 span? When you are counting seconds at the end of a game, 2:37 is a ton of time and could have made a tremendous difference. You toss things aside that you don’t want to deal with, and focus on only the stuff you want. Not exactly the way to go, is it?
Now, you are actually telling us how Tomlin felt? That sentence has three unknowns in eight words. Impressive. “It looks like” (maybe, maybe not), “he felt” (maybe, maybe not) “it was unlikely” (maybe, maybe not).
Hooray! Finally, something we agree on. Sort of. He most likely changed the outcome of the play… And the outcome of the game was changed from the perspective that it would not follow a Jones return for a TD. But HOW it impacted the outcome of the game is impossible to know. What we do know is the Ravens won. That clearly wasn’t what Tomlin wanted to have happen, but it also isn’t a done deal that if Jones scored a TD, that the Steelers could not have come back with 6:16 left to go in the 3rd quarter and the entire 4th quarter left to play.
Of course I am ignoring those things. Why bother? The game is over, and the Ravens won. To act like what Tomlin did somehow harmed the Ravens is a pointless exercise and ultimately undefined since we can never know for a certainty on how the game would have progressed on the other timeline. Of course I can say that the game was not over even if Jones had not scored. That is a simple fact. And the Ravens won is also a simple fact. What I CANNOT say with any certainty is that the Ravens would have won if Jones had scored a TD. We simply don’t (and can’t possibly) know.
Again with this idea that you knew what Tomlin was thinking at the time? And that he determined in that 3-4 second window of Jones’ return up the sidelines that he was going to have to get involved in that play to keep Jones from scoring?
Also, you are saying that Tomlin decided to do this after he saw his guys were beat? Really? You want to go with that? Because it is clear that Tomlin moves out to his spot right around the moment Jones catches the ball, before any outcome of the return could be determined.
Ah, missed that. If the refs actually enforced that rule, this would almost certainly never have happened in the first place.
Even so, I think there should be an additional rule that would have made it easier to award a touchdown, not just 15 yards (unless I’m reading the wrong rule). Stepping directly onto the field during a play is pretty cut and dry, and captured on tape, and it wouldn’t be hard to make a much stricter rule with harsher penalties. It appears that there was no clear rule to award a touchdown in that situation.
No, that’s not all we know. I don’t know how to make this any simpler: do you understand the concept of probability? Would you agree that a team that’s down 13 points is more like to lose than a team that’s down 9 points? Would you say that a team is in better shape if its opponent gets the ball on the 27 than if the opponent scores a touchdown?
About 65%. (I did make the mistake of starting from the time of the FG, not the end of the return.
Gibberish? Good gravy, it’s a very simple statement. Do you understand the idea of probability? Or what about the idea that Pittsburgh was almost certain to be down two touchdowns instead of a touchdown and a field goal?
For the record, people compile data about every football game. They can give you a pretty solid idea of how teams do in any given situation: a team that’s down 13 with 6 minutes left in the third wins X percent of the time, a team that’s down 9 with 3 minutes left in the third wins Y percent of the time. I am sure someone will work that out soon and I’m surprised I haven’t seen it yet. The bottom line, though, is that Y is going to be bigger than X. Thus - by taking four points off the board and preventing a score, the Steelers stayed in the game. As it happens, they lost anyway. But it’s incorrect to start from the end, work backward, and say that what might’ve happened is a total mystery. We don’t know for sure, but we can talk about what was likely.
At the time of the play, did Tomlin know the Ravens were going to win?
Yes, it is. But it’s inconsistent with your claim that it didn’t affect the outcome of the game. The outcome hadn’t been determined at the time!
Because coaches walk around the entire game talking to people, listening on their headset, etc. Why is it odd that he would walk while watching the screen. Is it really hard for you to walk and look at something at the same time?
This is a really stupid statement.
You don’t know that it was one step. Yes, we see the last step he took before he jumped out of the way, but we don’t see anything before that.
Presumably because he realized that the play was more than a routine return given what he was seeing and the crowd reaction, so he started watching the screen more intently.
Wrong. We have numerous coaches have actually been hit either watching the screen or not paying attention to what is in front of them. Additionally, we have two coaches both saying they could understand how something like that happened, and that they don’t think he did it on purpose. In fact, Belichick, a man with no dog in the fight, said, “it could have happened to any [coach].” Please explain to me why their expert opinions hold less weight than random people on the internet.
…so he decides to break a rule for which he risks losing his job, reputation, the game, and his safety. That is more likely to you? Do you really think he had some plan in his mind that anytime someone is on a breakaway near him on the sideline, he is gonna get in their way? How many other illegal moves do you think he had/has planned? I can just imagine all the schemes he has:
If Rogers gets hot, put Ambien in his water bottle
Slide ref a double-sided coin for any overtime coin flips
If Big Ben fumbles, throw multiple footballs on the field to throw off the defense
If Brady has a good first half, murder him in the tunnel before the second half, and surreptitiously replace him with Tim Tebow
Do you honestly think Tomlin would seriously GAME PLAN to blatantly break the rules in such a transparent and ineffective way? Really?
It’s highly debatable whether he would have scored or not absent the interference. Either way, it certainly did not work given the above, the fact that they lost the game, and the fact that he is $100k poorer and (possibly) without a draft pick.
And of course the immediate decision was made in less than 3 seconds as he only had roughly that much time to decide whether to interfere in the way he did.
He was watching the play on the Jumbotron so why on earth would anyone think he expected to get away with something that was on the very screen he was watching? Especially a nationally televised game on a return where, if the camera is going to be on ANYONE, it will be the returner. The Jets thought they could get away with it because they were targeting the gunners where few were paying attention.
He fucked up, the Ravens should have got the TD awarded but the refs fucked up too. Time to pay the penalty, learn the lesson and move on.
I think it’s worth pointing out that our ‘hated’ rivals have handled the whole thing in as classy a manner as you could expect. Kudos to them.
Unless I, and almost every player I see during games, have somewhere to be, it’s much easier to stand and watch (which is what Tomlin did once he was in the position he wanted to be) than shuffle like a crab sideways. I find the concept of Tomlin doing a crab walk from by the bench all the way to the sideline while mesmerized by something he’s seen countless times before and just so happening to stop at a spot where he can influence a play on the field to be quite amusing (especially the crab walk. I admit I’m smiling just thinking about Tomlin shuffling sideways being his normal mode of walking as he calls plays, talks to the refs, or goes shopping) and silly. You don’t. I think coaches plan ahead to get any advantage, including illegalities like faking injuries, spying on the opposing team with video cameras, or paying bounties to players for injuries. You don’t. I think we’ll just have disagree, and, hopefully, laugh at the image of Tomlin shuffling side to side to get anywhere.
Okay, after mulling it over all night, and considering all viewpoints, I believe, in my neutral, totally nonpartisan opinion, that the Steelers should lose all their picks for the next 10 years.
Even though** Omni** hasn’t been in the thread lately, I still want to ask: Do you think Tomlin was acting of his own volition, or on orders from management? If the former (the only reasonable POV) the losing of draft picks IS too draconian.
Do you think Kraft ordered Bellicheck to videotape Jets’ defensive signals? Do you think Tom Benson ordered Sean Payton and Gregg Williams to financially reward players for injuring players?
I bought that until I saw the video of him deliberately taking a sideways step to the sideline when he saw where the return was going. I find it stretches the limits of credulity to think an NFL head coach 1) Is “mesmerized” by a Jumbotron; 2) Walks like a crab whilst wandering; 3) Just happens to stop, all alone by himself, at a place exactly where he can effect the play on the field, and then 4) Smirks immediately afterward. I suppose Mesmerized, Wandering Crab Walking Extremely Lucky Guy is a fine band name, but I don’t buy it.
I can say with absolutely certainty the Jumbotron at M&T has no practical delay. Something probably measured in hundreths of a second.
Other than that, it seems pretty clear that in the end, the Steelers will lose some position in the draft if they end up with a respectable record. The Ravens have moved on, the Steelers won’t be able to shake this for a while but neither will it stain things like Spygate.
