Mike Tomlin says NFL office told him Minkah Fitzpatrick's blocked kick was legal

Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin says the NFL officiating office told him that Minkah Fitzpatrick’s blocked extra point against the New York Jets on Sunday night was legal and shouldn’t have been flagged for leveraging.

“I did talk to New York,” Tomlin said at Tuesday’s press conference. “They did tell me Minkah’s block was legal, which I knew in-stadium. But that’s life. None of us are perfect. There are going to be mistakes made in-game.”

Leveraging is normally called when a defensive player jumps or stands on another player in an attempt to block an opponent’s kick.

Steelers called for leverage on this blocked extra point. It looks like he touched them but did not leverage off of him. #NYJvsPIT pic.twitter.com/02YiWvXRB8

— Rate the Refs App (@Rate_the_Refs) October 21, 2024

As you can see in the video above, Fitzpatrick knifed through a gap and brushed past two players with his hands but didn’t appear to “leverage” off of them to gain an advantage upward to block the kick.

So, the Jets were awarded another try. They elected to go for two points when the ball was moved up and made the conversion to take a 15-6 lead.

On the NBC broadcast, rules analyst Terry McAulay also thought Fitzpatrick’s block was clean. So did CBS NFL rules analyst Gene Steratore during his weekly appearance on WDVE.

“I agreed with Terry on the play,” Steratore told the “‘DVE Morning Show” on Tuesday. “In this situation, this is a player just kind of swimming through that gap and not really gaining any height advantage. There might be slight contact on the body as he’s swimming through, but it really wasn’t something that gave him this unfair advantage because of the use of his hands.”

However, Steratore did think the officials were right to throw a flag on Larry Ogunjobi for unnecessary roughness when he threw Jets running back Breece Hall to the ground early in the game.

“There was a little more ‘oomph’ there,” Steratore said. “They were around the head where it looked like (Ogunjobi was) trying to pull ‘The Exorcist’ card of ‘I’m going to spin your head around.’”

On another note, Steratore also believed the first-quarter expedited replay assist that granted the Jets a first down right before a potential fourth-down conversion attempt was facilitated appropriately.

“The expedited review is something that is quote-unquote, ‘clear and obvious’ in a very quick piece of time, which is kind of like the play clock around 20 seconds,” Steratore said. “When they have the good fortune of getting such a quick shot that they can confirm clearly and obviously that this was just ruled incorrectly, and there’s something there, they should buzz down.”

He also thinks the proper call was eventually made on that play when it was ruled that Allen Lazard had reached the Pittsburgh 40-yard line, which was the necessary yard-to-gain to advance the chains.

“I thought it was a great spot in real time — he’s a half-yard short,” Steratore said. “And, boom! That first angle came up. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, his shin isn’t down. His knee is not down. He got everything there. There was the line to gain.’ So I thought it was a good job.”

Tomlin said “he didn’t have any beefs” with how that particular ruling was adjudicated.

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