Official Admitted to T.J. Watt ‘He Messed It Up’ on Offsides Penalty
Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker T.J. Watt was robbed from a strip sack in the second quarter of Sunday’s 18-10 win over the Atlanta Falcons. That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.
Watt said in a post-game interview with Mike Garafolo of NFL Network that an official admitted to him that he blew the call. The officials ruled that Watt was offsides on the play, but he actually timed the snap perfectly.
“Yeah, especially when the official says he messed it up after the first half. He went in and saw it,” Watt said when asked how it felt to get a game-sealing sack after having two strip sacks negated due to penalties. The second one was nullified because of an illegal hands to the face penalty on cornerback Donte Jackson.
On the following play after the blown call, Cousins completed a 12-yard touchdown pass to tight end Kyle Pitts to give the Falcons a 10-6 lead late in the second quarter. It was a big swing in momentum. To say the least, Watt wasn’t happy as he gave the officials an earful on the sideline.
A still shot clearly showed that Watt wasn’t in the neutral zone when the ball was snapped.
Ball is snapped, and T.J. Watt is not in the neutral zone.
Yes, it looked like he may have jumped early, but the video evidence is proof. This was a game-changing call. #Steelers pic.twitter.com/j0j2lWiar3
— Tommy Jaggi (@TommyJaggi) September 8, 2024
Watt was relieved to see that there was no yellow flag on the turf after his game-sealing sack on the final play of the game.
“I think that was one of the first times in my life I had a (walk-off sack), so I had to take a bow,” Watt said. “I had to make sure there were no flags because of the other two.”
Watt hopes a robbed sack doesn’t occur again.
“I talked to the official about it,” he said. “Something we’ll get cleaned up hopefully moving forward. It just sucks when you study so hard and find a little nugget, a golden nugget and you get it. And it gets taken away from you. So that was unfortunate, but it’s not gonna deter me from continuing to study and making those plays in the future.”
Watt finished with four total tackles (two solos), a sack, two tackles for loss, three quarterback hits and a fumble recovery. He gave props to Steelers Nation for taking over Atlanta and forcing the Falcons to be on a silent count.
“Steelers Nation is incredible, man,” Watt said. “It’s extremely demoralizing for an offense to be on a silent count at their home field. Silent count is incredible. Honestly, a lot of those plays go to them. The fumble that I was able to land on was because they had to be on a silent count at their own place. Any time that happens when you have a lot of shifts and motions, snaps can go anywhere, balls on the ground, you get to recover them. So Steelers Nation was absolutely incredible, but I’m not surprised.”
Alan Saunders contributed reporting from Atlanta.
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