The Patriots Escaped Pittsburgh After A Controversial Overturned TD Led To An Interception

The New England Patriots managed to escape Pittsburgh with a 27-24 win to earn a tiebreaker with the Steelers for the top seed in the AFC, with two weeks to play.

The Patriots scored a touchdown with a minute to play to go ahead by one and then converted a two-point conversion on a fade to Rob Gronkowski to take the three-point lead. The Steelers, playing without Antonio Brown after he left the game early with a calf injury, moved the ball deep into New England territory on a crossing route to JuJu Smith-Schuster that he took up the sidelines for 70 yards and to the 10.

On the ensuing play after a timeout, Ben Roethlisberger found Jesse James at the goal line, who stretched the ball out into the end zone for what appeared to be the go ahead score. As every scoring play in the NFL is reviewed, the referees took a closer look at the catch and determined that James, who stretched out for the goal line as he was going to the ground, did not maintain control through the ground and, thus, it was overturned as incomplete.

https://twitter.com/kg_holler/status/942549529567596544/

The reaction to the call being overturned was a mix of disbelief and understanding as fans have grown accustomed to the NFL’s catch rule being almost impossible to predict. That said, this time it seemed fairly obvious and, while it took a while for the announcers to catch on, Tony Romo made a knowing “ohhh noooo” once he realized what they were looking at and saw the ball move as it went to the ground — he was likely having flashbacks to the Dez Bryant incident.

The Steelers worked the ball to the five on second down and, rather than spiking the ball for a final play to the end zone on fourth down, Roethlisberger called the most obvious fake spike in history and tried to squeeze it in on a slant. The ball got tipped into the air and ended up falling into the arms of a Pats defender to end the game.

It’s one of the craziest finishes in the NFL this season, and fittingly came in a game that has stakes as high as they can be for a regular season contest. If Pittsburgh has to play in New England in the AFC Championship game come January, they’ll be thinking an awful lot about the overturned call and Roethlisberger decision on the interception.