01-12-2016, 02:38 PM
(01-12-2016, 02:10 PM)Wyche Wrote: While that may be, it's like this. When you're on that field, it is the officials' jobs to instill order, and keep things like what happened to Bernard from happening again. I've been in these situations travelling to play in the mountains of Appalachia with an all "good ol' boy" officiating crew. When the officials don't do their job on such an egregious play as the Shazier hit (he sized Gio up and took a good four to five steps toward him and speared him), players are gonna police that shit on the field themselves. That's just the way it is. THAT is why a guy such as myself has no issue with the Bengals policing it themselves.....it was obvious the officials had lost control, and seemed disinterested in restoring it.
I think people are forgetting that was not unprovoked, the Bengals were retaliating.....for crap in this game, and earlier in the season. There was another shot on Eifert this game, lest we forget.
Seems like I'm the only one that noticed, but the Bengals didn't really wake up and start playing until the dirty hit on Gio. Burfict pretty much became a one man wrecking crew after that, and; but for the Hill fumble leading to the other events; would have been considered a hero! Now, I gotta agree with you on the retaliation and who it was against. Had it been anyone but the Steelers, I might take the let's do everything the way we're supposed to and just play hard road, but I've seen too much over the years from those guys. Now, before the do-gooders who have never played sports jump back in here, there comes a time when somebody has to do something. Also those who decry bringing up the past are the very ones who are pointing out what Burfict did against Carolina last year. Still, there is a coaching factor that can't be ignored here, and it was on both sides. Steeler assistants on the field and fighting with our players on the sidelines, a pile of our players running out the tunnel with nearly two minutes left in the game, and of course the game ending penalties, one of which should have either been offsetting or not called at all. The Around the Horn guys unanimously said the officiating was the single biggest problem, and in reality it probably was. Burfict does indeed have some problems to iron out, but so does our staff. Does anyone think our players would have ran off the field if they were playing for a Bellichick? Coughlin? Del Rio? If handled properly, Burfict could easily make people think about him when the North division is mentioned rather than Ray Lewis, but he and the staff have a lot of work to do. In the meantime, I just went online and purchased a real nice Burfict drift jersey from the Cincinnati Bengals online store at 217 bucks off!
