Monday Night Football Was A Complete Mess

Joe MorganNovember 9, 2021

What in the world did we all watch last night?

There was a time when Monday Night Football was the “event” of the NFL weekend. It’s the last game of the NFL slate, placed in primetime, an opportunity for big-time players to make big-time plays with all eyes watching.

The eyes that were watching Monday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Chicago Bears had to have been strained.

In a wild 29-27 win for the Steelers, we had it all. And not in a good way.

Horrendous — and I mean horrendous — officiating, undisciplined football, and some of the worst announcing you’ll ever hear on a sports broadcast.

The Bears erased a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit and took the lead on a Darnell Mooney touchdown from Justin Fields with 1:46 left in the game. But two offside penalties by the Bears helped the Steelers get Chris Boswell into field goal range, knocking through a 40-yarder for the lead. Cairo Santos’s 65-yard field goal attempt fell short to move the Steelers to 5-3 on the season.

“We’re finding ways to win the game,” Ben Roethlisberger said. “Played well enough. Not great. But offensively speaking, we’re just doing enough right now.”

Now that the final result is out of the way, it’s time to discuss just what in the heck we watched last night.

Officiating

Disgusting. Embarrassing. Shameful. These are just a few of the words that can be used to describe the officiating from last night.

There were 17 accepted penalties for 145 total yards on Monday night — twelve on the Bears — and more than a handful were highly questionable.

In the third quarter, the refs missed a roughing the passer penalty by Alex Highsmith of the Steelers.

Hey @NFLOfficiating are we going to call roughing the passer the same for all 32 QBs! @justnfields is a Quarterback if you guys were wondering. pic.twitter.com/D0STmBk8r9

— Lord Zito (@VivalaZito) November 9, 2021

Earlier in the game, the Bears had been flagged for roughing the passer on a very similar hit on Roethlisberger.

“I told the ref Big Ben just got that call,” Fields told reporters after the game, “you gotta call it both ways.”

And then there was the egregious.

Late in the fourth quarter, the Bears got the stop they needed, with Bears linebacker Cassius Marsh sacking Roethlisberger on third-and-8 to force a punt.

Marsh — activated off of the practice squad on Monday — took a few steps toward the Steelers bench before running