Chicago Bears: These were the biggest disappointments from Week 9

Chicago Bears [game] Disappointment No. 3: The officiating crew

Let me preface this with the most important part of this article that I’d like you to take away after reading. If you take away nothing else from what I’ve written, I want this to be it: I’m far from a “blame the refs” guy, and rather, I’m pretty much an anti “blame the ref” football fan.

However…

The officiating crew for this game was absolutely, objectively terrible. In 60 minutes of play, there were 12 penalties for the Chicago Bears (115 yards), and there were five penalties for the Pittsburgh Steelers (30 yards).

Now, I’m not going to say one team got favored or were in the officiating crew’s pockets, but what I will say is that this officiating crew made — and missed — plenty of calls for the Chicago Bears to deserve the heavy criticism of many.

Since the taunting call was mentioned earlier, I’ll use examples outside the taunting call.

This video shows a clear late hit on Justin Fields that was never called, but it wasn’t the only botched penalty by the referees. A pass interference call on Jaylon Johnson was ticky-tack at best. Finally, a low block inside the tackle zone took away a touchdown pass to Jimmy Graham.

These are just a few examples of the oblivious malpractice performed by the officiating crew.

Like it or not, this game was poorly officiated as a whole, and because of it, the outcome of this game exists with an asterisk in the mind of many.