Collier: The going got nasty, and the nasty got going
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Line judge Adrian Hill seperates Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey and Raiders defensive back Mike Mitchell during Sunday's game at Heinz Field.
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Just as a matter of taste, that was pretty much exactly what I was looking for in a Steelers-Raiders collision, a total unreconstructed brawl of a football game in which all rules and most protocols are marginalized on the altar of general mayhem.
An actual contest might have been better, but let's not quibble.
First a general description:
Undisciplined, unfocused, unrepentant, unreliable and unforgiven -- and that was just the officials.
"I'm not going to question the officiating," said Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, last seen 25 yards from the sideline doing exactly that. "I understand the climate that we're in from that standpoint, and I'm just not going to do it; our guys aren't going to do it. We're going to play football, and we're going to try to play it as fairly as we can, as cleanly as we can. We didn't do it very successfully today in some instances."
That the Steelers somehow put a 35-3 tattooing on the white-hot Raiders while simultaneously committing 14 penalties for a franchise record 163 yards was one of those odd creatures so ugly it was beautiful, playing like viral video about the winner of the world's ugliest dog contest.
Usually, coaches will walk into a postgame news conference and announce confidently that you're simply not going to win when you commit 14 penalties, but when the opponent commits seven of its own, including the one that gets its best defensive player ejected, all frets are off.
Decorum had already been hacked to tatters by the time Ben Roethlisberger shot a perfect 22-yard scoring strike to Emmanuel Sanders for a 21-3 lead late in the first half. Then things got nasty.
"Me and him were going at it," said Steelers guard Chris Kemoeatu in reference to Oakland defensive tackle Richard Seymour. "Then Ben was saying something and I guess he took it out on Ben."
First Published November 22, 2010 12:00 am
