Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Diontae Johnson was vocal about the crew officiating the team’s 20-10 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
While it certainly appeared the referees’ calls were one-sided, as Johnson indicated, a now-calmer Mike Tomlin knows it’s up to the players to overcome it.
“It is our desire to win definitively, where potentially controversial calls are less significant,” Tomlin said in his weekly press conference. “That’s what elite teams do. It is our desire to be a good and elite team so that we’re not as flimsy and become a component of some debatable calls and things of that nature.”
From the roughing the passer penalty on Keanu Neal to the offsides call that negated an initially successful field goal, it was clear the officiating crew was against the Steelers. But the ineptitude and inconsistency of NFL officials rears its ugly head in each game — there’s nothing teams can do in the moment but outplay it.
“I like to focus my energies on the things that are within our control, the quality of our execution. When you do that definitively, it makes those discussions more relevant, and that’s the point that I want to make to our football team moving forward.”
“You just simply got to make those discussions less significant by the quality of your play by winning and winning definitively, and we didn’t play well enough for that to transpire.”
The Pittsburgh Steelers are far from elite and not even good right now. The fact that they couldn’t overcome the poor officiating is no surprise.
What is Mike Tomlin saying here to the refs?
Seems like: "What the f–k is wrong with y'all today?" pic.twitter.com/qbD0aond5r
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) October 29, 2023
