Cassius March Taunting Call

Overview

Cassius Marsh Taunting Call refers to a controversial call made by an NFL referee during a crucial moment of a game between the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers, which ultimately cost the Chicago Bears the game. The call was so egregious that NFL and sports fans banded together online to make memes of the event, the NFL, and the rule that started it all.

Background

In the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears, the Steelers were ahead going into the last few minutes of the fourth and final quarter. Pittsburgh had the ball, which meant that they could win if they managed to run out the clock, or put more points on the board that Chicago would be able to respond to. With one attempt left to move the ball forward, the Pittsburgh Quarterback was sacked (taken down) by a Chicago Bears defensive player named Cassius Marsh. Mr. Marsh, who was formerly a Pittsburgh Steeler himself before being cut, was playing in his first NFL game since joining the Chicago Bears, and had just accomplished his revenge. With the punting team already on their way out on the field, Pittsburgh had resigned to giving the ball back to the Bears, giving them a solid chance at winning, until a referee threw a flag, citing Cassius Marsh was excessively taunting at the enemy team, and giving Pittsburgh another set of chances to play the ball, culminating in them scoring the final points of the game. Footage of this play was uploaded to YouTube^[1] by the channel Highlight Heaven on November 8th, 2021, where it received 480,000 views in two days (shown below).

Online Reaction

Online reactions to the call, and the end result of the game, were very unanimous and broken down into three parts. The first part was that the movement Marsh did, just walking and standing at the midfield point while looking at the enemy team, does not even come close to resembling a taunting call, and that earlier in the very game there were two clear examples of the Pittsburgh team showing taunting but no flags being thrown. These two examples were found and posted on Twitter, with @TonyCMKE^[2] showing the entire Pittsburgh defense running to the opposite side of the field to make a group photo pose after an interception, and @DaBearsk35^[3] posting a video of Pittsburgh defensive lineman Watts doing an over-exaggerated pose after making a great play (shown below).

The second group of reactions surrounding the event are focused on one key detail, the apparent hip-check by the referee into Marsh before throwing the flag. Normally, within the field of play, if a player runs into or otherwise interferes with the referees, there are fines, ejections, and possible suspensions that can happen. But in this instance, it looks like the referee initiated the contact, then threw the flag against Cassius Marsh before making it about apparent taunting. This hip-check was noticed by several people, who posted videos of it online, and Cassius himself talked about it in the post-game interview, which were posted on Twitter by the accounts @GregTompsett^[4] and @JMILLtheWZRD^[5] respectively (shown below).

The third and final group of people talking about the taunting call are the ones simply making memes about it and noticing the wicked sweet jump kick that Cassius Marsh pulled off shortly after making the great play. Footage of the kick was posted to Twitter by @BarstoolSports, with a prominent meme being made about the referee Tony Corriente being the MVP for the Steelers team being posted by @sara_larson (shown below).

Various Reactions

Search Interest

External References