Ummmmm . . . didn’t you see the defender also with his arm out initiating contact? Isn’t that illegal contact 5 yards past the line of scrimmage?
Didn’t care strongly either way about the game - actually, it’s the first Super Bowl I can remember where I actually missed some of the plays because I was in the kitchen melting delicious cheese over nachos, making root beer floats, or some other form of tasty goodness.
The pass interference call was definitely correct. Read what VarlosZ said again, because he is absolutely correct. Heck, I wish they made that call more often, especially given the amount of crap defenders go through on those sorts of plays (still bitter about that Asante Samuel call? Bet your ass). DtC has good stuff to say too - the only call I REALLY didn’t like was that wtf-did-they-get-it-from call on the Hasselbeck block. The holding was very borderline, but wasn’t so egregiously bad that you can really get mad about it, given that the refs have to make that call live.
I thought Roethlisberger was in for the TD on that run when I saw it live, and I’m still pretty convinced he was in after watching that replay a gazillion times.
I’m on the “even less people gave a damn than usual” bandwagon. I was nominally rooting for the Steelers for a bunch of minor reasons, but would have been much happier with a competitive and/or exciting Seahawk win than with the dreck we got.
If Stevens could have worked a little less on his mouth and more on his hands these last couple of weeks, you probably wouldn’t be complaining about the calls right now.
I’m waiting for Joey Porter to complai–what’s that, you say? He’s on the winning team? Well, then, I guess he’s going to keep quiet.
I don’t really care for either team–heck, if forced to choose a side I would give the slight edge to The Chin, since I felt so bad for him ten years ago when O’Donnell threw away the Superbowl against the Cowboys. However, I thought that the officiating was pretty suspect.
I disagree. That was a CRUCIAL call. If you go by what Michelle Tafoya (?) was saying, the Pittsburgh bench was down when the Seahawks were driving for the go-ahead score. Then, the bogus holding call–the interception–and they’re back to life. If the Seahawks score a TD, the Steelers get even more demoralized. Oh, maybe they still wind up winning, but instead, it’s Good Night, Gracie early on in the fourth.
You could tell everyone on the Seahawks side of the field was frustrated at the refs. They were probably thinking “Man, we’re facing Pittsburgh, the fans AND the refs! How can we win?”
Wait … the illegal block call was reversed? I didn’t catch that.
What was wrong with the TD call? Part of the ball got over part of the chalk line before Ben was down. That’s all you need, and (at least from the camera angle that they showed over and over) he got it.
Put me in the “that offensive PI call in the end zone was BS” camp, though. Sure, it met the technical definition of interference, but refs ignore more serious contact between receivers and defenders every Sunday of the football season.
Finally, the refs didn’t cost the Seahawks the game; they blew it on their own. Take that two-minute drill before the half - if Hasselbeck, Holmgren, & Co. can’t figure out how to make better use of the clock when they have a first down at the Steeler 40 with a minute to go…jeez.
I didn’t see that at all.
The key word there is “initiating contact.” Jackson didn’t initiate the contact. Both players were clutching at each other and Jackson swept away the defender’s arm.
It was a bullshit call. Between that and the phantom Roethlesberger touchdown, the refs spotted the Steelers 14 points. It says a lot about the “champs” that even though Seattle couldn’t manage the game clock and Jerramy “Let me open my mouth, get Porter riled up, and then drop three or four key passes that 9 out of 10 receivers catch” Stevens couldn’t hang onto the ball, they still would have lost if the NFL refs hadn’t bought into sending Bettis home a winner.
I can’t say with certainty whether the bad calls cost the Seahawks the game, but they were bad calls, and there has been a lot of noticably bad officiating in the NFL this year. They’ve got to do something about that.
It doesn’t make the call more right because all of you guys are saying “clearly” and “definitely”.
It was definitely, clearly, the WRONG call.
The receiver deked the DB. As the receiver changed direction, his arm extended and the DB was still moving in the direction of the fake. There was simply no push there. It didn’t create or maintain the separation.
HUGE call. If the game plays out the same way after that, Pitt never goes up by two scores if that call isn’t made.
Seattle made mistakes, to be sure. But that blown call was huge. John and Al saw it. Steve Young called it.
The holding call on Seattle’s completion to the 1 yard line was a bad call too, and a killer.
The PI call was dumb, but dumb on the part of the receiver, not the ref. He did initiate contact and extend his arm while moving away from the defender but I don’t think he actually benefited from the move, so he left himself subject to a penalty while in fact he could have caught the ball even without having done so. Dumb, just plain dumb.
Roethlisburger’s “TD” was close but no, I don’t think he made it in either.
All in all it seemed Seattle got the short end of the stick but the officiating wasn’t so flagrent that they couldn’t have overcome it just by performing some basic execution.
And Stevens ought to be frikkin’ keelhauled for allowing a trash talking SOB to get him off his game. Trade that dedgum wimp in the offseason because yesterday when it mattered he was worthless.
You’re leaving out the most important part of the description (I assume because it makes your position untenable): He extended his arm with has hand planted on the defender’s chest. Regardless of how much or how little force he exerted, that’s a push. The only way it could conceivably not be a push is if the defender had slathered stickum all over his chest, and the receiver was unable to retract his hand.
Bull. First off, the hand wasn’t on the DB’s chest. It was on the upper arm, possibly the shoulder. And they were both clutching during the scramble drill and Jackson was simply sweeping the arm away. It was a bullshit call and if the teams were reversed, we’d see whiney Joey Porter crying about how there’s a reffing conspiracy against the Steelers.
I just wanted to point out that the Steelers were called with this very penalty during the regular season. I don’t remember the game, but it was on an int return and Alan Faneca was called for a low block while in the process of making the tackle. So it’s not unprecedented.
VarlosZ, you’re from Mars.
They had their hands tied together and it was a brush/touch of the arm. Jackson’s hand stayed in place as his body moved away. It was barely contact, not a push, and a unbelievably irresponsible call in a game of this significance. Completely negated what was a fabulous scramble drill that ended with a d-back getting jacked out of his jock strap and a super throw by Hasselbeck.
Michael Smith at ESPN.COM
By “didn’t show up” you mean 95 yards on 20 carries right?
That’s only 4.75 ypc, and works out to about 1500 yards over the course of a season.
That’s the kind of “not showing up” you’re talking about.
Yep. Did his performance make any difference in the game?
28 touchdowns in the regular season (1.8 a game)- 0 in the Super Bowl.
1880 yards rushing in the regular season (120 a game)- 95 in the Super Bowl.
He had a subpar game, especially since he is not only the best player on his team but the best in the WHOLE FRIGGIN’ LEAGUE. Yes, the Steelers’ defense held him tough, but they also held Peyton Manning tough and he’s considered to be a choke artist. So it is with Alexander.
The one that really puzzled me was Ben’s Testaverde TD. The behavior of the line judge was very, very puzzling. As Ben was going down, the line judge ran close to the pile to get a better look. He very specifically does NOT signal TD as Ben goes down the first time, which is the correct call IMHO, based upon the replay. However, Ben moves the ball into the end zone after he’s down, at which point the line judge’s hands go up in the air.
WTF??
The official’s thought process is so obvious in this sequence that he might as well have been shouting it out loud. “notinyet,notinyet,notinyet,notinyet,notinyet,(Ben moves ball forward) OK, he’s in! TD” The problem is that of course Ben can’t move the ball forward like that after he’s clearly down, which makes this a piss poor call in a game full of them. It does however, have the effect of making the “ruling on the field” a TD, and that makes the burden of proof for an overturn much, much harder. If the call had been made correctly on the field, there is no way they award Pittsburgh the TD on replay.(I say that, but with this crew, who knows? they might have decided it was a safety. :rolleyes: )
OH, I thought you said he didn’t show up, not “his performance didn’t make any difference.” I must have misread.
Besides, maybe it was a little tough for him to score a touchdown when the refs moved the ball from the 1 yard line to the 40 yard line based on a whim. That makes it a little tougher for him to get in.
How many times did Seattle get within reasonable rushing scoring distance?
Hey, when the QB is practically picking the secondary apart at will, teams tend not to rush as much. Alexander’s carries were below average, too.
Peyton gets harsh criticism because he has taken it upon himself to call the plays. Notice how much better Hasselbeck did simply because he trusted his offensive coordinator and didn’t second guess him all the time. Alexander can only rush when his number was called, and it wasn’t called that often. Second, you could also make the case (although I won’t) that it was Pittsburgh’s concern with Alexander that led to the Seahawks being able to move the ball through the air as well as they did.
I thought the PI call was crap. The contact was quite incidental and I don’t think influenced the outcome of the day.
The touchdown wasn’t quite as bad as the USC phantom touchdown v Michigan decades ago, but it was not clearly a TD. I wasn’t clearly NOT a TD either. The call was poorly signalled, at first the official comes up with one arm raised to spot the ball several inches short, then after play was over the second arm comes up. Poor mechanics on the official, in my opinion. If he had come up with both arms in the first place, it still would have been reviewed and still upheld, but we’d all feel better about it.
The block below the waist on the INT return was marginal. If they’ve been calling it this way all year, fine.
There were a few instances where the spot near the first down marker seemed to have been fudged to favor the Steelers. Some seemed to miss the mark by a foot or more.
All in all, a lousy job. The only worse crew I’ve seen all year worked the Alamo Bowl.