AFC North games tend to get a little chippy.
Sunday’s contest between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers was no exception.
A protracted sequence early in the fourth quarter kept the Bengals offense on the field, and resulted in Jalen Ramsey being ejected after punching Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase.
But the story does not end there, and now the league is set to investigate the incident.
The sequence began when the two players were jawing after the whistle on a third-down play, which you can see here:
Eventually everyone was separated, and both Ramsey and Chase earned offsetting personal foul penalties. and the Bengals offense remained on the field for 4th-and-1. After using a few different shifts and a long count to try and draw the Steelers defense offsides, Joe Flacco burned a timeout.
That’s when Ramsey and Chase resumed their … friendly discussion.
As you can see here, the two were jawing yet again when a Pittsburgh trainer came onto the field to try and give Ramsey water. But instead the trainer had a closeup view of Ramsey throwing a punch:
Here is another look at it:
“He spit on me,” Ramsey said. “I don’t give a f— about football after that, respectfully. I’m always going to be all for trash talking, s— talking, things like that. I actually enjoy that part of the game. I think that people know that. … We were talking s—, which I’m cool with. And then as soon as he spit, it was f— that. … I’m sure the NFL, they’ll do their due diligence. They’ve got 100 cameras out there. They can investigate. They can see everything. … They should be able to pull it up and see that he spit and it’s whatever after that, to be honest. I was still a little too nice if I’m keeping it honest with you.”
After the game, Ramsey addressed the incident, raising the allegation that Chase spit on him which is what sparked the punch:
Asked about the allegation, Chase denied that he spit on Ramsey:
However, as you can see from the “Community Note,” video evidence might undercut Chase’s denial:
Asked about the incident after the game, referee Bill Vinovich said the game officials did not see Chase spit on Ramsey.
“No. Obviously, we did not,” he said. “We did not see anything that rose to that level at all.”
However, an NFL spokesperson confirmed to ESPN’s Adam Schefter that the league will review the incident.
As Ramsey noted, they have plenty of cameras to work with.
