Bad officiating mars final drive in Bengals-Ravens

Joe Burrow had good reason to scowl tonight.

A 428-yard passing performance, including 234 of them and three touchdowns to receiver Ja’Marr Chase, was undermined by the failure of the officials to see two clear fouls on what could have been the go-ahead two-point try.

Defensive holding, not called. Forcible contact to the head of Burrow, not called.

Amazon Prime rules analyst Terry McAulay said that both should have been called. And Al Michaels wasn’t bashful about calling BS on the fact that the no-calls robbed the Bengals of another shot at converting a two-point conversion that would have forced the Ravens to try to get in range for a potential game-winning field goal with 38 seconds left.

All too often, officials shove the flags deeper into their pockets in moments like that. But the rules are still the rules, and when the rules are broken it shouldn’t matter whether the foul occurred in the last minute of a game, or the first.

And it wasn’t the only questionable officiating decision of the drive. The officials missed — like they did in crunch time of Vikings-Rams two weeks ago — a clear face mask of Burrow early in the drive. (Again, that’s not subject to replay review.) Then, it appeared that a fourth-down attempt by the Bengals came up short.

With the drive starting at the 30, the 40 yard line was essentially the goal line. And it appeared that the knee of receiver Andre Iosivas was down before the ball got to the white stripe.

Was it a makeup call of sorts for the missed face mask? Maybe. Regardless, it looked like he didn’t get to the 40.

Still, the worst of it came on the two-point play. After the officials missed a clear false start by Chiefs tackle Jawaan Taylor in overtime of Monday night’s win over the Buccaneers, some in league circles were buzzing about how bad officiating has become.

Based on what we saw tonight, no one can credibly say that NFL officiating is fine. Except in the sense of the cartoon dog in the burning room, sipping coffee while he’s inevitably engulfed in flames.