The Pittsburgh Steelers blew a golden opportunity to clinch the AFC North with a 13-6 loss to the Cleveland Browns. Pittsburgh’s final offensive play was an incomplete pass to WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling in the end zone, and the veteran receiver believes that a penalty should’ve been called on CB Denzel Ward for defensive pass interference on the play.

“I thought it should have been a [pass interference] call. But it wasn’t. It sucks,” Valdes-Scantling said via Chris Adamski of TribLive on Twitter.

MVS walked media through the final play. “I thought it should have been a (pass interference) call. But it wasn’t. It sucks.”

— Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) December 28, 2025

“Got a pretty clean release on him, got on top of him, went up and then he did a good job of just playing through me. Thought I should’ve got a call, but no call was made, so that’s what it was,” Valdes Scantling said to reporters, including The Athletic’s Mike DeFabo.

QB Aaron Rodgers agreed with Valdes-Scantling.

“Definitely interference,” Rodgers said during his postgame press conference via the team’s YouTube channel.

It would have been a tough call to make, with Ward arriving at Valdes-Scantling right around the same time as the football.

The CBS broadcast showed another angle that made it appear as though Ward may have contacted Valdes-Scantling a bit early.

Whether or not a flag should’ve been thrown, the Steelers should have never been in that situation. The offense was horrible all game, and the Steelers deserved to lose given their offensive struggles.

While it’s always tough when a call doesn’t go a team’s way, especially one that could decide its playoff fate, it’s hard to argue definitively that it should’ve been interference on Ward. He didn’t get his head around on the ball, which often is a sign that interference is going to be called, but he didn’t definitively arrive early or prevent Valdes-Scantling from making the play. He did appear to try to pin his arms, which provides more of a case for a call to have been made, but it wasn’t.

It’s a call that officials are going to avoid making when it can decide the game, and it’s on the Steelers for putting themselves in the spot where they would need help from the refs to have a chance at winning. Targeting Valdes-Scantling for a third play in a row was a questionable decision by Rodgers, and the totality of the team’s offensive struggles were a bigger issue than one play that may or may not have been a penalty.

It was a well-officiated game for the most part, with the most questionable call being an offensive pass interference on Valdes-Scantling that didn’t really matter because a taunting call against Cleveland a few plays later. It wasn’t the officiating that caused the Steelers to lose, and while it’s understandable that both Valdes-Scantling and Rodgers think the final play should’ve been flagged, the bigger issue is some of the decisions made in the passing game and how lifeless it looked for the majority of the game. Penalty or not, the Steelers didn’t play well enough to win, and that’s the story of this game.