Steelers' former starter uses officiating as a scapegoat for his benching against Denver

While the Pittsburgh Steelers got the job done on Sunday against the Denver Broncos, it was far from pretty.

QB Justin Fields went so far as to say that the offense simply wasn't good enough citing self-inflicted wounds like penalties as reasoning.

One player who knew those penalties all too well was Broderick Jones, who was benched before the game, inserted for a disastrous series , and then pulled for the rest of the game.

However, Jones took exception more than accountability when asked about his three penalties within six snaps:

Broderick Jones says defenders "flopped"

“Defenders flop. Refs throw flags. That’s the end of that, said Jones when asked about his penalty latent stretch on Sunday. "Really not much you can do about it, just [have] a next play mentality and keep going...

"...It's definitely frustrating but you have to have a short memory. Like I said you have to a have a next play mentality because you don't want it to become repetitive so you just have to always try and flush it as soon as it happens and get back on your A game."

Well, Jones and the offense as a whole weren't on their A-game on Sunday, accounting for six of the team's nine penalties including three from Jones alone, who never saw action again after his brief stint.

“I thought the first thing that kind of captured my attention was the penalties," said Coach Tomlin after the game. "You can’t produce or sustain drives being penalized the way that we were. And so we got some work ahead of us there, among other things. Just from a knee-jerk reaction standpoint. though, that was the most troublesome component of the game.”

It's hard to win on the road in the NFl. It's almost impossible to do so when penalized as heavily as Pittsburgh was. And while emotions run high after games and certainly among players in Jones' shoes, it's a rough look for a player that Pittsburgh may have already waived the white flag on in terms of his development.

Related: Steelers are waiving the white flag with recent first-round pick following Sunday in Denver