It’s not every day that you get to hear Jesse James say he thinks he was robbed, but that’s just what we got after Sunday’s game between the Patriots and Steelers.
James was initially ruled to have scored a touchdown in the final minute of the fourth quarter, but the catch was overturned after a replay review found that he didn’t maintain control of the ball after hitting the ground. Wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster called it a “b---- a---" call while James found other words to share his feeling that he thought it was a score.
“I’m sick about it. I’ll be thinking about this the rest of the night,” James said, via ESPN.com. “I had my knee down, turned up the field. Whether they consider that a football move or not is up to them to decide. I guess I don’t know a lot of things about football. I thought it was a touchdown for sure.”
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said he won’t “cry over spilt milk” regarding a call that always leads to a fierce reaction no matter how often officials make it using the same criteria. That reaction hasn’t led to a change to the rule concerning a receiver’s need to “survive the ground” when scoring a touchdown, however, and the Steelers found themselves on the wrong side of the ruling this weekend.