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Friday, November 27, 1998 By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
PONTIAC, Mich. -- They make sure their eyes are sharp, but has anyone ever thought about putting NFL officials through a hearing test?
The crew of officials blew more than their share of calls on the field yesterday on both sides, but nothing in football history can equal the mistake that referee Phil Luckett made that led to the Detroit Lions' 19-16 victory over the Steelers in overtime.
Has any official ever called the coin toss wrong, at any level in which football has been played?
Norm Johnson's 25-yard field goal with one second left sent yesterday's game into overtime after the offensively sluggish Steelers had blown a 13-3 lead in the second half with the help of a botched kickoff return. Jerome Bettis and Carnell Lake came out for the coin toss to determine which team would get the chance to receive in the sudden-death overtime.
Luckett told Bettis to call it in the air. Bettis called "tails," and the CBS-TV audio caught him saying just that. The coin landed tails, but Luckett stunned both the Steelers and Lions when he awarded it to Detroit.
The Lions took the kickofff, moved to the Steelers' 24 with the help of another controversial call and Jason Hanson kicked a 42-yard field goal to win the game and drive Bill Cowher bonkers.
The Steelers coach screamed at the officials as they marched into their locker room after the game, accusing them of deciding the game, according to a KDKA-TV producer at the scene.
"What makes me mad is when you fight and scratch for 60 minutes out there and it's decided by people who wear striped shirts," Cowher said afterward. "There's something wrong with that."
Bettis and Lake were dumbfounded by Luckett's call. The official said he heard Bettis say "heads-tails" as the coin was in the air, so he went with what was first called.
"It was a ridiculous call and we lose the game because of it," said Bettis, who said he called tails and nothing else. "I'm at a loss for words. I can't believe a referee with that experience would make a call like that."
Lake backed up Bettis. Even Detroit's Robert Porcher, representing the Lions for the coin toss, apparently could not believe it. Porcher would not say what happened, but laughed in the locker room about the call and said, "All I know is, we got the ball."
The Steelers' defense, of course, could have overcome the error by stopping the Lions, but they did not. Herman Moore, who burned Lake often in the second half, beat him over the middle to catch a 28-yard pass from quarterback Charlie Batch to the Steelers' 37. That put them in range of Hanson, who already had kicked a 51-yard field goal in the third quarter.
But the Steelers came up with what appeared to be a huge defensive play on third-and-11 at the 38. Chris Oldham and Darren Perry sacked Batch back to the 48 and out of field goal range.
Oldham, though, was called for a facemask penalty. The officials have a choice on those: They can rule it was blatant and award 15 yards or that it was unintentional and mark off 5. They gave him 15, which sent Cowher into orbit.
"How can you call 15 yards on a facemask where he never grabbed it?" Cowher said. "What kind of judgment call is that?"
That gave the Lions a first down at the 33, Barry Sanders ran right for 9 yards and Hanson kicked the game-winner.
The victory improved the Lions' record to 5-7 and dropped the Steelers' to 7-5. While the coin toss was outlandish, it was not the only one Luckett's crew made.
They also canceled a Kordell Stewart interception on a ball that was tipped because they said it had hit the ground. Detroit cornerback Robert Bailey picked that off and ran it back to the Steelers' 35. TV replays showed the ball hit Steelers' receiver Courtney Hawkins while he was lying on the ground, which meant the ball was still alive. Instead, the Steelers were given the ball back at the Detroit 38 and they moved in for the first of Norm Johnson's three field goals.
Earlier, the officials ruled that Stewart was down before he lost a fumble when replays showed he lost the fumble before he was down.
"As far as some of the calls and stuff, they go both ways," Steelers linebacker Levon Kirkland said. "Referees are human."
If human means they make mistakes, so, too, were the Steelers. Not only did they fail to hold another lead against a team they were favored to beat, but their offense scored just one touchdown and blew early opportunities to run out to a bigger lead.
The Steelers' running game bogged down again as Bettis managed just 67 yards on 26 carries. They made it into Lions territory on their first six drives and managed just two field goals to lead 6-3 in the third quarter.
"What happened early in the game, that's not my concern right now," Stewart said. "I don't care about that. My thing is, when you have a chance to win, you have to seize it, plain and simple."
They failed doing that both early and late.
They finally scored a touchdown and even that came on a botched play. Stewart, under pressure, threw a 10-yard pass to Bettis that was high. The ball bounced off Bettis' hands but right into those of teammate Will Blackwell, who ran into the end zone to complete the 24-yard scoring play.
It put the Steelers ahead 13-3 in the third quarter.
But Hanson's 51-yard field goal brought the Lions back within a TD at 13-6 and they scored that touchdown in the fourth quarter when Batch hit Moore, who had beaten Lake again, for a 21-yard score.
Tied, 13-13, with 6:36 left, the Steelers tried a reverse on the ensuing kickoff. Richard Huntley took it 2 yards deep, and tried to hand off to Blackwell despite the deep penetration by the Lions. The two ran into each other, Huntley fumbled and Detroit's Scott Kowalkowski recovered at the 9.
"We were just trying to make a play," Huntley said.
The Steelers' defense held, but Hanson kicked a 35-yard field goal to put the Lions ahead 16-13.
Back came the Steelers, helped by a crucial penalty against Bailey on third-and-26 at the Steelers' 29. Bailey was penalized 5 yards for illegal use of hands, which is an automatic first down.
Given new life, the Steelers marched downfield to Johnson's 25-yard field goal that sent the game into overtime.
That led to all the controversy, but by then the Steelers had blown another game without the help of the officials.
"I don't think it should have come down to that," Steelers President Dan Rooney said in a morbid Steelers locker room. "It didn't matter. We should have won the game before the coin toss."
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