The Steelers were penalized 13 times for 144 yards in Sunday's 21-18 win over the Browns. And while coach Mike Tomlin was generally displeased with all the flags, he was apoplectic about one call in particular. It happened late in the third quarter when Steelers cornerback William Gay hit Browns receiver Ricardo Louis near the sidelines to break up a would-be completion:
Gay was eventually flagged for unnecessary roughness. But it wasn't the call that bothered Tomlin, it was that the officials appeared to first look at the FirstEngery Stadium video board to see a replay of the hit before throwing the flag.
"That's why I was irate," Tomlin said, via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Joe Rutter.
"I'm a big player safety guy. I'm on the competition committee," Tomlin continued. "Very rarely are you going to hear arguments from me regarding calls relative to that, provided they are done in real time. I thought they called it off the JumboTron, and I won't accept that."
On Wednesday, an NFL spokesman confirmed what Tomlin said after the game: Officials can't consult the stadium video board to help them do their jobs.
"Officials are all instructed that they are not to use the stadium video boards to aid in officiating in any way," spokesman Michael Signora said, via Pro Football Talk.
Tomlin also talked about the team's 12 other penalties and how it affected the flow of the game, especially for running back Le'Veon Bell, who held out during training camp and the preseason..
"We were out of sync because we were behind the chain," Tomlin said of the ineffective running game. "When you get highly penalized and you're working 1st and 15 or 2nd and 15, you're not gonna have a great running game. You can write whatever story you wanna write about, his missing the preseason and all of that, the bottom line is that we got highly penalized and put us behind the chains and that minimized the running game. Write that, because that's what happened. ...
"We were highly penalized, and we gotta be better with our hands, eyes and feet relative to our positions," Tomlin continued. "So we'll get back to the lab and work hard in those areas. I really thought that was the story of the game in terms of us with our lack of execution. I thought our offensive drives got stopped because of penalties, and I thought our defensive drives got extended because of penalties. And when you're doing that, you're gonna keep people in the game.
"We're not making excuses, we're not blaming anyone, we gotta perform better from a technical standpoint to stay clean so we don't stop ourselves. But again, like I said, it's great to make those necessary adjustments and grow while you win."
The Steelers host the Vikings on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.