DETROIT — Twenty-seven years after the most infamous coin-toss incident in NFL history, in the same city and against the same team, the Pittsburgh Steelers once again were involved in a miscommunication involving the typically rudimentary coin toss.
Sunday’s flip faux pas wasn’t nearly as consequential, and it occurred during a Steelers’ win.
Unlike the Thanksgiving Day, 1998 memorable coin toss that took place before overtime, on Sunday it was the pregame toss that a wrong call was made. Among the captains representing the Steelers at midfield were Cameron Heyward and Aaron Rodgers, and each had intentions — at the behest of coach Mike Tomlin — of electing to receive the opening kickoff if the Steelers won the toss.
It was after Heyward made the call and won the toss that he mistakenly told referee Carl Cheffers the wrong choice.
“I was supposed to take the ball,” Heyward said, “and I deferred.
“(Teammates) gave me a lot of (flack) for it.”
Rodgers, particularly — and most immediately — so.
“I figured that I missed a side conversation between him and ‘Mike T’ (Tomlin),” Rodgers said, “because Mike T came to me and said, ‘Are you good if we take the ball?’ I said, ‘Yeah, for sure.’
“So we went out there (for the toss), and Cam, he’s real territorial about he’s the one who gets to call it. I’m fine (with that); I don’t care. But we win the toss, and he goes, ‘Defer.’
“I looked at him and said, ‘What?’ In my head, I didn’t say it out loud because I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to act like I wasn’t in the conversation,’ you know? And we jogged over and he said, ‘I blacked out.’ I don’t know. I said, ‘Hey, “Head,” I thought we were taking the ball’. He goes, ‘I blacked out.’ ”
The bungled call in the end didn’t hurt the Steelers — they won, 29-24 — and in fact a case could be made Heyward’s botched utterance helped.
Modern analytics compel teams to defer if they win the opening coin toss because the possibility exists they will get two consecutive offensive possessions at the end of the first half and beginning of the second. The Steelers handled the former end of the bargain — scoring their first touchdown with 2 seconds left in the second quarter — and they appeared to work the “defer” to perfection to start the third quarter when they drove to the Lions 3 … before Steelers tight end Darnell Washington fumbled.
The Steelers also took the opening drive of the game and got a field goal for a 3-0 lead.
Alls well that ends well, but, as Heyward put it, “I definitely messed up.”
Not as badly as referee Phil Luckett did on Nov. 26, 1998, back at the old Pontiac Silverdome when overtime began and the Steelers and Lions tied 16-16.
Luckett insisted Steelers captain Jerome Bettis called heads, whereas the future Hall of Famer maintains he said tails.
“(Bettis) called ‘heads-tails.’ He first called ‘heads,’ ” Luckett later told Referee.com.
After the game, Bettis told reporters: “I did not say ‘heads-tails’ … That’s a bold-faced lie.”
In the rules of that day, overtime was a true sudden death. The Lions took the ball and quickly marched into position for a Jason Hanson winning 42-yard field goal.
That was a wild ending — albeit, one that Sunday’s finish rivaled.
“We were able to correct (my flub) throughout the game,” Heyward said. “You know, it kind of paid dividends being able to double dip before the half and then get the ball.”
