Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, Mike Tomlin And Ben Roethlisberger Think Someone Other Than Themselves Is Responsible For What Happened On Sunday

Interesting: Ben Roethlisberger said the Steelers were still deciding whether to call time-out after that huge JuJu Smith-Schuster gain at the end of the Pats game, but ref Tony Corrente assumed he was - and whistled it.

— Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala) December 19, 2017

Tomlin says Roethilsberger was signaling timeout to the sideline after the JuJu catch, asking if he should call one. Tomlin didn't want it, but says Tony Corrente saw the signal and gave the Steelers the timeout.

— Andrew Siciliano (@AndrewSiciliano) December 19, 2017

Ben Roethlisberger says he wasn't trying to call a timeout here but the official had the audacity to call one anyways pic.twitter.com/1m50gx663f

— Daniel Connolly (@DanielVConnolly) December 19, 2017

Can't imagine where Corrente got the wild idea that Roethlisberger might have been calling a timeout. pic.twitter.com/QrKuZ5p0gA

— Michael Hurley (@michaelFhurley) December 19, 2017

Wait, wait, wait...do you mean to tell me that with the final minute of the 4th quarter clock ticking in a one score game and a quarterback frantically running down the field doing pirouettes with his hands crossed in the form of a 'T' that an NFL official assumed that the then losing team was looking to call timeout?!

Some nerve! How dare a professional referee put two and two together!?! If I know anything about the Pittsburgh Steelers it's that they tend to be more successful when they fly by the seat of their pants, so one could easily surmise that a blatant example of situational officiating did - indeed - cost them home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

I mean, clearly the only thing that stopped their go-to play of rushing to the line, faking a spike, and throwing the ball to the only other offensive player that appeared to have a pulse while the entire secondary had primary coverage on him was that it wasn't run 30 seconds earlier from 3 yards back.  Damn ref sabotaged the whole game "plan" by equating the universally understood hand signal for clock stoppage with a strong suggestion to stop the clock. Shame on him for not ignoring Ben Roethlisberger since clearly he does best work when his head coach has no idea what he's thinking as he makes shit up on the go.

In all seriousness, this is why the Steelers - as currently constructed - are no real threat in the AFC. How the hell could they possibly do what it takes to win consistently as a team when they've never, ever actually lost as a team? I don't think there is a single franchise in professional sports that points as many fingers or makes an many excuses as Pittsburgh, and I say that knowing full well that Doc Rivers is still active in professional sports.

Let's just take a quick look at their efforts in trying to prove they should have won a game that they - themselves - actively lost with what may have been the dumbest throw throughout an NFL season that has become infamous for piss poor quarterback play. First, they whined for the longstanding catch rule to be repealed solely because it would have behooved them in one particular instance. Now, Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger - who oddly enough are now on the same page after originally just blaming each other - have taken it upon themselves to defer that blame to an official who took the most obvious, unmistakable cue in all of sports.

​I honestly don't know what's more pathetic; The fact that days later they are still crafting narratives of foul play to explain the foulness of their own play, or that this flat out fabrication is the best that the two of them could manufacture on 36 hours notice.