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In the moment, Cassius Marsh said that he didn’t think anything of it. It seemed accidental. He’d sprinted back over the 50-yard line as Ben Roethlisberger stepped up into the pocket, dropping the Steelers quarterback for a sack as they faced a 3rd-and-8 with just over three minutes left in the fourth quarter. The linebacker then stood up, twirled around and kicked the air in celebration before turning to look toward the Steelers’ sideline.
But as Marsh passed Tony Corrente on the way back to his own bench, the head referee appeared to stick his hip out and make contact with Marsh, before flagging him for taunting. Corrente’s hand was already placed on the flag tucked inside his waist when he made contact, and Marsh said postgame, after seeing the play again, that the “hip-check” was “pretty clear.”
“If I were to do that to the ref or even touch the ref, we’d get kicked out of the game and possibly suspended and fined,” Marsh said. “So I just think that that was incredibly inappropriate.”
At the time, the Bears trailed the Steelers 23-20. The penalty on Marsh gave Pittsburgh a fresh set of downs to work with in Chicago territory. The drive ended with a 52-yard field goal by Chris Boswell, but that forced the Bears into a situation where they needed to score a touchdown in the game’s final minutes to take the lead for the first time. They ultimately did just that when Justin Fields conducted a seven-play, 75-yard drive in just over a minute to take the lead.
Marsh said that he’d been doing that type of celebration for his entire career, which started at the NFL level when the Seahawks selected him in the fourth round of the 2014 draft. He said this instance “was just bad timing,” though it’s “sad to see stuff like that happen in a close game like that.”
“First of all, keep in mind that taunting is a point of emphasis this year,” Corrente said via the pool report postgame. “And with that said, I saw the player, after he made a big play, run toward the bench area of the Pittsburgh Steelers and posture in such a way that I felt he was taunting them.”
Corrente later added that the contact with Marsh after the play didn’t contribute to the call — and was unrelated to the taunting. Marsh, however, said that he thought it’s “unfair that he has the ability to do that with no consequence.”
That wasn’t Corrente’s only controversial call of the game. A 1-yard touchdown pass by Chicago was negated because he thought guard James Daniels had made contact with Pittsburgh linebacker T.J. Watt below the waist outside of the tight end box, which Corrente referenced as a new rule for this year.
“I have to judge that there was contact, and that’s what I judged,” he said, according to the pool report. The video replay clearly showed there was no contact.
Pittsburgh’s win extended its winning streak to four games — while the Bears dropped their fourth-straight contest heading into the bye week. The Steelers will host the Detroit Lions on Sunday.
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