Vontaze Burfict has earned the reputation as a dirty player, so now he’ll have to deal with not getting the benefit of the doubt on close calls.
Burfict was hit with a game-changing unnecessary roughness penalty late in overtime against the Broncos Monday, and the linebacker believes the officials bias towards him was the cause.
Here is the personal foul on #Bengals Vontaze Burfict. Warranted? #CINvsDEN pic.twitter.com/ZlaMHzWIcd
— SiriusXM NFL Radio (@SiriusXMNFL) December 29, 2015
Burfict tried to strip the ball from Denver tight end Virgil Green as he was going out-of-bounds, and was penalized from there.
“The refs, they obviously have it out for me, but you can’t call a bulls— flag like that at the end of the game,” Burfict said. “He looked at my number and then threw it.
“The refs were late to blow whistles all night, and they threw the flag late. Once the dude [Green] flopped, the ref looked at me and seen it was my number and then threw the flag. I can’t control that. Just keep playing football.”
Burfict went on to claim that referee Ed Hochuli blew the whistle on after the tight end had flopped out-of-bounds.
“I said, ‘Ed, what happened? No whistles were blown?’” Burfict explained. “He was like, ‘Yeah, no whistles were blown, but he said you hit him late.’ I said, ‘What?’ and just went on about it.”
Burfict knows his reputation, so he’ll need to focus on making sure the dumb penalties are corrected before the playoffs.