The Steelers-Bengals rivalry has always had plenty of bad blood, but on Sunday, it crossed into something else entirely when Ja’Marr Chase spat at Jalen Ramsey.
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It wasn’t just a spit either… it was a loogie, after which Ramsey, the Steelers star, snapped and threw the punch at Chase that got him ejected from the game. On the other hand, the Bengals wideout has since been suspended with a fine amounting to $500,000, after initially denying that he had spat on his opponent. But camera angles proved otherwise.
While most of us only saw the chaos from the TV angles, one man was close enough to feel the heat coming off both of them: Steelers captain Cam Heyward. The veteran DE had a front-row seat to the entire confrontation, and in the latest episode of his podcast, Not Just Football, he laid out exactly what happened in real time.
“Jaylen came to me during that and was telling me he got spit on,” Heyward recounted. Being the Steelers captain, the first thought that came to Heyward’s mind was to handle the chaos ASAP.
“You want to handle that because it can be misconstrued like Jaylen was just popping off. Jaylen told me, ‘I wouldn’t react if it wasn’t that,’” Heyward further recalled.
Once Ramsey hit his breaking point, Heyward quickly realized the situation had gone beyond routine trash talk. Ramsey wasn’t waiting for explanations, and he definitely wasn’t interested in letting it go.
“I was getting tired of trying to chase Jaylen around because he was looking for work… Rightfully so. If somebody spit on you, you have a license to do whatever it takes ’cause now this ain’t about ball anymore,” Heyward admitted.
The Steelers veteran was furious when officials claimed they “reviewed” the incident and found nothing conclusive:
“They said they looked at it, but I’m like, ‘There’s no way in hell they looked at it.’ They just threw up a bunch of smoke to keep the game going.”
But what truly, truly bothered Heyward was his belief that Ja’Marr Chase spitting on Ramsey was more of a play than frustration. After the Bengals’ win over the Steelers in October, Chase controversially told the press that Mike Tomlin’s defense was predictable.
“They did exactly what we was expecting and hoping they would do. Man coverage. We knew they were going to put Joey on Tee and put Jalen on me. And we knew that we were ready for it. We were gonna take advantage of those opportunities,” Chase said back then.
For Heyward, Chase’s choice to spit came out of desperation after getting erased by Ramsey, Joey Porter Jr., and a Steelers secondary that came in with a different answer on Sunday:
“After the first game, he was talking about, ‘Oh, we knew what they were going to do.’ You ain’t know what to do once we had a plan for your a**… People get frustrated, and when they get frustrated, they don’t know how to act, and they don’t know how to play football.”
And to make it worse, not only did Chase manage to get into Ramsey’s head, but the spitting incident, which led to the right hook, forced the refs to make a call that left Pittsburgh without its best corner for the final stretch. The Steelers captain was understandably upset by this. “I’m more pissed off that they took my guy out of the game, even though he was playing the game the right way,” Heyward said.
Luckily for the Steelers, they ended up winning the game. Moreover, some would say that with the league suspending Chase one game for the spit, justice was served, as it backs Ramsey’s side of the story. And last but not least, the incident has also brought some fire and unity back into Pittsburgh, which they have lacked in recent weeks.
With Aaron Rodgers’ injury, a renewed vigour and identity are what will help the tean survive their remaining fixture, which arguably is among the toughest in the league.
