The Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers got into a scuffle before Sunday’s game even began, and at least one player believes Roger Goodell is to blame.
Bengals offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth said after the game that the NFL allowed the fight to happen by doing nothing when Steelers linebacker Vince Williams got into it with Vontaze Burfict on Twitter following the first meeting between the two teams on Nov. 1.
“I’ll get in trouble for this, but this is the NFL’s fault,” Whitworth said, per Coley Harvey of ESPN.com. “The bottom line is, I love the Pittsburgh Steelers, I love Mike Tomlin, but they had a player that made a death threat to one of ours after the last game about spilling his blood in the streets, and everyone saw it, and the NFL did nothing about it.
“And so they allowed there to be that kind of animosity and that kind of thing around.”
The incident Whitworth was referring to took place after the Steelers thought Burfict had a classless reaction to Le’Veon Bell’s season-ending injury. Williams and Burfict later got into it on Twitter like a couple of high schoolers, with Williams saying he would be “painting that boi on sight” if he saw Burfict off the field.
“That involves when someone’s with their little kid in the street, that they have to worry about if someone’s going to walk up on them and do something to them outside the game of football,” Whitworth said, noting that Goodell should have done something about the tweet.
Not surprisingly, Burfict and Williams were the two players who started the skirmish on Sunday. Pacman Jones was also right in the mix, and you can see a video of him going nuts here.
As football fans, we would all love to see another Bengals-Steelers matchup in the postseason. But to a certain extent, Whitworth is right. The NFL should have done something about Williams’ threat, even if it wouldn’t have prevented the scuffle.
