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    Clete Blakeman To Referee AFC Wild Card Game Between Steelers And Ravens

    By Dave Bryan December 31, 2014 at 03:32 pm


    The Pittsburgh Steelers will host the Baltimore Ravens in an AFC Wild Card game Saturday night at Heinz Field and on Wednesday it was announced that Clete Blakeman will referee the game.

    In case you need to be reminded, Blakeman was the referee for the Steelers game a few weeks ago against the Atlanta Falcons and he was the one that threw the flag on linebacker Jason Worilds for  roughing quarterback Matt Ryan with 5:58 left in the second quarter.

    That penalty negated a second down sack by and the Falcons went on to finish the drive with a touchdown just three plays later. The league did not fine Worilds the following week for the hit and that means the Steelers linebacker was unjustly penalized.

    This will be the second time that Blakeman has refereed a game between the Steelers and the Ravens. Last season he did the Thanksgiving night game between the two teams that the Ravens ultimately won 22-20. That game included the long kickoff return by Ravens wide receiver Jacoby Jones during which he had to avoid Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin down the left sideline. Tomlin wasn’t flagged for interfering with Jones during the return, but he would later be fined $100,000 by the league for the incident.

    In the seven Steelers games that Blakeman has refereed during his career, Pittsburgh is 3-4.


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    • Moneypenny76

      Maybe he’ll make up for the ridiculous Worilds penalty in this game. LOL!

    • Rubem Dornas

      I don’t remind very well the play, but the Steelers were also benefited in one play.

    • Thank you, Dave. Now I know the name of the referee that I can send hate mail to for calling such a bogus penalty against Worilds.

    • steelmann58

      well we get who we get hope just calls it down the middle

    • Reno

      People are going to say he is human and he made one bad call against us but still not a comforting feeling knowing he is capable of making a ridiculous call. There is nothing worse than a ref or official making a terrible call that impacts the score or potentially impacts the outcome of a game.

    • turtlefart1

      There’s been calls like the Worilds one by every Ref in the NFL this year. The only thing we can hope for is the game is called equally for both sides. I’m sure it will be.

    • StrengthOfVictory

      I remember reading that last season, Blakeman’s crew called the most offensive pass interference penalties. His crew also called 5% more penalties than the league average against the offensive team last season (for whatever that’s worth).

      You just hope that there won’t be any calls or no-calls that have (potentially) game-deciding implications.

    • Dan

      Thanks Dave! Steelersdepot really does give us Steelers fans everything we need to know, including everything we didn’t know we needed to know. Happy New Year!!

    • Leon Mcnair

      I want ed to referee he don’t call bullshit he let’s them play

    • Beaver Falls Hosiery

      The NFL should publish referee’s statistics both as a crew and individually in the interest of transparency. They have too much impact on the game to not be able to see wh is making the bad calls and how they affect games. Also, good to see who really are the top shelf refs and crews rather than rely on anecdotal reports.

    • The refs with who grade out above the line by the league are the crews still working right now. The crews that did not fair as well are home now, just like the non playoff teams. The Super Bowl is refed by an ”all star” crew with the best refs at each position coming together to form the unit responsible for the most important game of the season.

    • Beaver Falls Hosiery

      Not good enough. We really don’t know how these refs were throughout the season. The NFL will not ding a ref he misses a call but ‘it was reasonable’ that he missed it – and we don’t see the grades. The stats should be published after each game.

    • cencalsteeler

      I am actually comfortable with this. He km own he blew that call, so his subconscious should sway the steelers way.

    • Ron

      Ignoring the first Brown TD they took away after review, without definitive enough evidence that the ball was not already across the line by the angle of the cameras… since we did ultimately get the TD but lost valuable clock time. At 6.5 minutes in Q4, we score a touchdown to bring it to a one-score game, and the TD is immediately erased by a bogus “holding” penalty (no legitimate foul visible on the replay). Ravens then follow with two blatant penalties: driving the QB into the ground, causing a head injury that takes Ben out for a mandatory check-up. NO FLAG. Immediately followed up by leading with the helmet against a defenseless receiver (Heath Miller) which forces him out of the game for a mandatory concussion check. Again, NO FLAG. Hello, men in stripes… you just took a TOUCHDOWN away from us on what should have been an obvious no-call, then you completely IGNORE all the rules that are supposed to protect players from injury and allow concussion-inducing hits on back-to-back plays by the Ravens defense, ending a drive that already legitimately led to a touchdown instead into a turnover in the Ravens favor. Talk about one-sided calling! The Refs HANDED the Ravens this game in the most pathetic and obviously rigged, YES I SAID RIGGED playoff match since WrestleMania III. Congratulations, Blakeman, on butchering what should have been a fantastic and close playoff game.

    • JustJoe

      The referees took the steelers down last night. A lot of questionable calls went against the black and gold.