Vontaze Burfict

Bengals lineman blames the Steelers fight on Roger Goodell and NFL

Published Dec. 14, 2015 2:30 p.m. ET

Teddy Mitrosilis

The Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers are feuding, and there's no sign of it slowing down.

On Sunday, the two teams got into a pregame scuffle that really began when they first played each other on Nov. 1. In that game, Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict tackled Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell and got up to celebrate the hit, which left Bell with a season-ending knee injury (Burfict didn't know in the moment that Bell would miss the rest of the season, of course). After the game, Steelers linebacker Vince Williams sent out some since-deleted tweets that threatened physical violence if he saw Burfict in the streets.

Then prior to Sunday's game, Adam 'Pacman' Jones posted a video on Instagram saying, "I guess Pittsburgh got all gangsters ... Mike Tomlin need to tell his team to shut the f--- up and play."

So all of that was bubbling when Burfict, Williams and the two teams took the field on Sunday for pregame warmups. Of course there was going to be a confrontation between the division rivals.

Adam 'Pacman' Jones had some things to say, as usual.

The teams pushed and shoved at midfield, the Steelers ended up winning the game and then Pittsburgh lineman Marcus Gilbert shot back at Pacman afterwards, saying among other things, "All I want for Christmas is the Bengals."

All of that made for entertaining drama, but they weren't the most interesting or noteworthy comments. Those came from the more level-headed Andrew Whitworth, who blamed the whole ordeal on -- surprise, surprise -- Roger Goodell and the NFL.

"I'll get in trouble for this, but this is the NFL's fault," Whitworth, a Cincinnati lineman, said. "The bottom line is, I love the Pittsburgh Steelers, I love Mike Tomlin, but they had a player that made a death threat to one of ours after the last game about spilling his blood in the streets, and everyone saw it, and the NFL did nothing about it. And so they allowed there to be that kind of animosity and that kind of thing around."

Andrew Whitworth: The Bengals-Steelers scuffle is the NFL's fault.

Whitworth continued: "How people react to hits, that's happened throughout the league since the game began. How Vontaze reacted to Le'Veon Bell getting hurt, it happens in the game. He had no clue he was that hurt. It could be a sprain. It could be anything else.

"But when you allow guys to talk about barbaric things off the football field, and in this day and age of our country? And you allow guys to talk about things like that, it's on Roger Goodell and the NFL. They should have done something. They should have stepped up. They should have made sure that players know that kind of attitude and that kind of character is not involved in the league. That's their fault. It's on their head."

Teddy Mitrosilis works in social content development at FOX Sports Digital. Follow him on Twitter @TMitrosilis and email him at tmitrosilis@gmail.com.