When Eddy Piniero nailed a 53-yard field goal attempt as time expired to give the Chicago Bears a walk-off, 16-14 road victory in Denver, Vic Fangio officially became the first Broncos head coach to begin his tenure with the franchise with an 0-2 record.
Had it not been for an egregious roughing the passer penalty called against Broncos outside linebacker Bradley Chubb on what turned out to be the Bears’ final ( and game-winning) drive of the game, Fangio’s team would almost surely (their win probability would have been about 99.9% without the penalty) be entering their Week 3 matchup with the Green Bay Packers with a 1-1 record.
The following clip shows the hit Chubb was flagged for:
During his Monday afternoon press conference, Fangio was asked about the if he would submit the film of Chubb’s penalty to the league for review.
His response:
“In regard to officiating, I’m just going to quote Sean Payton, who is a much more senior head coach than I am, ‘We can’t control poor officiating or awful calls.’ And we’ll just go about it that way,” Fangio said. “We still have to find a way to win the game regardless of what’s happening.”
When pressed, Fangio doubled down.
“It wasn’t called as [the rule is] written.”
Had the penalty not been called, the Bears would have been forced to burn their final timeout on that play — a five-yard completion to tight end Trey Burton who was tackled by Denver cornerback Isaac Yiadom inbounds.
At that point, Chicago would have been looking at a 2nd-and-5 situation from their own 30-yard line with :24 seconds left on the clock. And, more importantly, they would have had no timeouts remaining.
Hypothetically speaking, the Bears moving the ball 30 yards to get into field goal range — with the Broncos defending the sidelines — would have been extremely unlikely.
To his credit, Fangio didn’t blame the referees for the Broncos’ loss on Sunday afternoon. But the harsh reality of the situation is the zebras changed the outcome of the game.
The Bears had a call like that made against them a little before that,so unless timing of the call is the issue there,the same type of penalty was given to both teams.Seems fairer to me than what is stated in the article.