The Cincinnati Bengals aren’t playing good football — but they aren’t getting many breaks, either.
One such break could have occurred in the second quarter of a 3-0 game favoring the Bengals on Monday Night Football against the Pittsburgh Steelers. On the fifth play of a Steelers drive, James Conner scored on a 21-yard pass from Mason Rudolph.
Bengals head coach Zac Taylor says he checked with the league office and it confirmed the score should’ve been called back.
“If they are down the field before the ball is thrown, then there’s an ineligible receiver downfield,” Taylor said, per Bengals.com. “On a touchdown, you can’t challenge whether it was OPI (offensive pass interference) down the field. So if they engage with a second-level defender, which they did… and they said that they missed it. That part is hard, because we can’t challenge that because it was a scoring play. I made that mistake in the preseason. So that part was frustrating.”
Not hard to see in hindsight:
Normally, this wouldn’t be too big of an ordeal. This wasn’t say, the late third-quarter score that put the Steelers up 24-3 instead of 17-3.
But this was the second quarter and the Bengals had a lead. Things weren’t trending great either way and there is nothing to say Cincinnati could have held the Steelers to a field goal if this play hadn’t happened.
And yet, it’s another mark in the “unfortunate” column for a winless Bengals team that can’t seem to shake the injury bug or sheer bad luck.
