TEMPE, Ariz. -- Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said Monday that it's likely that complaints his team made to officials during Sunday night's game might have led to a late-game penalty that resulted in a shorter attempt on the field goal that gave Arizona the lead for good.
The Cardinals had alerted officials that the Cincinnati Bengals were mimicking quarterback Carson Palmer's cadence.
"Probably," Arians said. "Because they had flinched a few other times, and they have a history of it."
Bengals defensive tackle Domata Peko was given a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty with six seconds left and the game tied at 31 because he allegedly yelled out Palmer's cadence, which caused right guard Ted Larsen to move. The penalty moved Arizona kicker Chandler Catanzaro's field goal attempt from 46 yards to 32 yards, which he hit to give Arizona a 34-31 win.
After the game, Cincinnati coach Marvin Lewis called the penalty a "phantom call." Peko insisted that he said "get set, get set" because the Cardinals had hurried to the line of scrimmage. "I trust what our player did and said," Lewis said. "He's alerting a run and not anything to do with what they're saying.
"I don't see how they make that call at that point in the game like that. I trust our guy to be honest with me."
Arians has seen the penalty called before but "not recently" and said it "was a good call."
Had Larsen not jumped, it's unlikely the officials call the penalty, Arians said. But, regardless, he'd rather his offensive linemen not move. If there had not been a penalty on the Bengals and Larsen was drawn into a false start, a 10-second runoff would have been enacted and the game would have gone into overtime.
"That would have been it," Arians said.
Larsen, who was starting in place of Jonathan Cooper, who was out with a knee injury, graded "very, very well," Arians said.
"Other than the almost FUBAR [play] of the year," Arians added.