Bears player says referee hip-checked him while preparing to throw flag for taunting
The Steelers’ 29-27 win over the Chicago Bears on Monday night was a wild one. There was drama, a few big plays and a bit of controversy — and that just in the fourth quarter.
As for the controversy, Pittsburgh led 23-20 with under 4 minutes to play when Bears linebacker Cassius Marsh sacked Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger on a third-and-7 play from the Chicago 47.
Marsh got up, celebrated and then looked at the Steelers bench, perhaps uttering a few words. For some reason, that drew a flag for taunting.
Given the first down on the play, the Steelers ended up kicking a 52-yard field goal, and those three points were kind of important, right?
But that’s only part of the story. Marsh said he was hip-checked by referee Tony Corrente, who is in his 27th NFL season as an official.
“I think it’s pretty clear to everybody who saw it, I wasn’t taunting and I’ve been doing the celebration my whole career,” Marsh told reporters after the game. “It’s just sad to see stuff like that happen in a close game like that. It’s just rough man. I don’t want to say too much because y’all know how it is.
“But the one thing that I will say is on my way to the sideline, I got hip-checked by the ref, and it’s pretty clear. If I were to do that to a ref or even touch the ref, we’d get kicked out of the game and possibly suspended and fined. So I just think that that was incredibly inappropriate. And that’s all I’ll say about that.”
You might be thinking a ref wouldn’t do something like that, but it sure appears as if that’s exactly what happened in this video from Will Brinson of CBS Sports:
What do you think? Do you think Marsh is right? Or was it an accident?
