thelesterlee
The Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers battled on Monday Night Football last night and by battle, I mean more like local neighborhood kids throwing pebbles and sticks at each other before they run behind the house and drink directly from the hose.
If you didn’t make it to the end of the game then you should know that the Steelers won 29-27 and the refs did everything in their power to ensure that result. Referee, Tony Corrente, went out of his way to punish the Bears for bullshit.
With the Steelers up 3, a 3rd and long sack by Bears linebacker, Cassius Marsh, was about to give Chicago a huge momentum swing.
Andddd none of that mattered because he dared to stare at the Steelers sideline after sacking their star rapist which led to a taunting penalty.
I’ve already written about how terrible the NFL taunting emphasis is this year. Penalizing players for celebrating their accomplishments in the face of their opponents is either incredibly naive or incredibly racist, I can’t tell.
When Giants owner and old rich white loser, John Mara, comes out in favor of taunting because he’s ‘sick and tired of taunting’ my ears bleed from that sound of the dogwhistle. I’ve been at bars next to old white guys who roll their eyes and complain when a receiver high steps into the endzone. The true anger radiates off these people when they see brown people enjoy themselves.
But again, I’ve written about taunting before. What happened on Monday night was some other weird shit.
Here’s Tony Corrente and Cassius Marsh, um, interacting, prior to the flag being drawn.
Tony Corrente leaned into the contact and then held his flag toss like a walk off three pointer. What a joke pic.twitter.com/MhNlNVewJx
— Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) November 9, 2021
The fuck?
This flag was clearly personal. There is no reason why Tony Corrente attempted to block Marsh’s path to the sideline. There is no reason why the flag came after Marsh had already returned to the bench.
This is main character syndrome. This is an asshole wanting everyone to look at him. He wanted to be the center of attention. There were clips of his post-game press conference trending last night. I didn’t even know refs did press.
The taunting penalty gives referees too much power. The NFL should be limiting the number of decisions refs make, not expanding the chance of human error—or in the case of taunting—introducing a new element of refs just throwing around flags around because they feel like it.
Also, this is Cassius Marsh.
Cassius Marsh looks like when you watch a big budget film about a notorious serial killer and Zac Efron or Brad Pitt is the star of the movie only for the end credits to show the killer’s real life mugshot.
