The Seahawks lost. Get over it. (Super Bowl reffing)

The BBQ Pit
1

I can’t believe how much “OMG WE WUZ ROBBED” crap I’m hearing/reading about the Super Bowl I’m reading already. Did the refs possibly miss a call or two? Yeah it’s likely they did, as they are humans like all of us. Was it that bad? I didn’t see it. Let’s go through a couple, shall we?

First there was the pass from Hasselbeck to Jackson that would have landed the Hawks on the 1 or 2. Instead, they got called for holding, which they followed up with an interception. Holding is one of those things that they could call on every single play, so I’m sure it was technically the correct call, but I’ll concede that reasonable people can disagree. However, the Seahawks still coughed it up on the next play.

Next was another pass to Jackson, in which he magically got seperation from Chris Hope by pushing off him as he cut back into the inside. Did Jackson actually push Hope and affect the play? It’s pretty hard to say, but his arm extended into the guys’ chest, and suddenly there was seperation. It’d be impossible to not pull out the flag on that one.

I’ll admit the Roethlisberger TD was sketchy, but I think they made the right call. It was pretty apparent from the instant replay that the ball broke the plane on as Big Ben was coming down, even if he landed a few inches outside the endzone. It didn’t appear that the ref called it for that reason, but instead for the fact that the ball was laying across the line after the play. Like I said, sketchy, but they got it right.

Fourth quarter, and another holding call leads to a Hasselback interception. On the run back, Matt gets called for an illegal block as he rolled through a blocker to tackle the returner. Pretty much everyone thought that was bad call, but I think they got it right. What’s the point of that rule if you can always just barrel under blockers like that to get to the runner? Had Hasselbeck not rolled like that, there’s no way he would have made it to the ball and it would have been a much longer return.

Soon after that the birds get the ball back and Hasselbeck coughs up the ball on a run. Let’s ignore the fact that if he cracked open his “Quarterbacking For Dummies” book once in a while he’d know how to prevent such things from happening by sliding feet first. It really looked like he wasn’t down by contact. That’s what I saw at home, and that’s apparently what the refs saw too, as they ruled it a fumble. On review, it was clear that he was indeed contacted on the way down, so they reversed the call.

Reasonable people can disagree on some of these points, but I just don’t see how anyone can think the refs handed this game to the Steelers. If anything, were I a Seahawks fan I’d be more upset about that hot mess the birds threw up at the end of the 2nd and 4th quarters. What a sorry display that was. Disagree with a call or two if you want, but this wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments is just silly. You lost, get over it and do better next year.

2

I was rooting for Jerome, but those calls were really bad. The Rothlesberger TD was NOT a TD. The replay showed it.

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In the NFL’s biggest, most-watched game, the officiating must be beyond reproach. It wasn’t. Not only that, the questionable calls all went for the Steelers. The NFL needs to do something about this, or they’re no better than the WWE.

4

There were no more bad calls in this game than what you see on average in any game. It’s a shame there’s ever any but the game is so fast and there’s so much to cover that it gonna happen. If you want to win then you’d best make sure that your game plan and your execution is stong enough to absorb some of the “iffys”.

Had Stevens not bent over to Porter’s trash talking it would have been a moot point… or 7, as the case may be.

Had Alexander had any toughness to him, again… 7 moot points.

Seattle had the momentum in the first and didn’t take advantage of it. Some of their key personnell, whose performances could have secured a win, simply didn’t contribute.

Bummer, because the matchup looked awesome on paper.

5

My favorite was when Shaun Alexander blinked his eyes and they called the Seahawks for motion. Now maybe he did twitch or something, but ABC totally didn’t see it. That was pretty funny.

I think Seahawks fans (I’m not one) could gripe about the non-hold call on the play that sprung Parker for a touchdown (Steelers’ tight end totally wrapped the Seahawks defender) or the guard, Fanesca? who about 5-10 yards down field on an important third down conversion (screen to maybe Randle El).

On the Roethlisberger TD, no way the linesman saw him over the line. He should have called what he saw and then replay would not have put it in. Still, I think Cowher goes for it there and Steelers score anyway next play on a sneak. Most likely outcome.

Net, the game was poorly called and almost every bad call/missed call went against the Seahawks. But if the Hawks make one of their missed field goals and do their work they would have won the game. They didn’t. Too bad, so sad. Overall it was a murky, kind of boring game that they let stretch on way too long. If these games are going to run over four hours they should start them an hour earlier.

Personally, the most offensive part of the game was the Rolling Stones at halftime. Now THAT was an embarassment!

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Eagles fan here… it was amazing how similar the game played out to last year’s SB for Seattle, another “West Coast Offense.” They left points on the field at the end of the firs thald due to poor clock management, and then did not go into a hurry-up offense with 8 mins to go down by 2 scores. I was glad to see the Steelers win it. They are a class organization, and I was happy to see Seattle lose, as I don’t want anyone associated with the West Coast offense to enjoy the slightest hint of success.

As an aside, friends and I were debating if there was a SB in which the heavier, less physically fit coach has won. It was hard to choose among Belechick and Fox, but otherwise, you have to go back REALLY far.

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They’re in Mo freakin’ Town and they bring in an aged, foreign talent. Kinda parallels having active Patriot Tom Brady toss the coin when you’ve got 40 years of retired HOF MVP greatness clustered a few yards away.

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What killed the Seahawks was terrible playcalling on offence(especially in their two minute drills), and overpursuit on defence. Case in point: after the pass interference call, Seattle faces a 1st-and-20. They call a running play to Alexander for 1 yard. On the 2nd-and-19 they call a second running play that loses 4 yards. On third down, they take a shot at the end zone. :confused:

On defence, it seems like the Seahawks bit on every fake the Steelers called. The reverse to Randle El in the first half that went for 10+ yards because the Seahawks had 11 men in the box. Big Ben ran a bootleg* for a critical first down right past a linebacker intent on hitting the running back. And then there was the big touchdown pass to Ward: the DB who was supposed to be covering Ward bit on the handoff to Parker and went to cut him off, while the rest of the D bit on the reverse to Randle El. Here’s a hint for the Seahawk’s defence: when Hines Ward runs a go route on a running play, something is up.

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My wife and daughter were both disappointed that they only got Aretha for the national anthem. Even Kid Rock and Eminem at halftime would have been better, at least they’re from Detroit.

10

Mike Marsh over Jeff Fisher, 2000.

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  • By the way, a football terminology question: My definition of a bootleg is when a quarterback rolls right or left directly after the snap with a clear intention to run the ball(as opposed to rolling out, looking for a pass and then deciding to run). However, in the third quarter there was a play where Hasselback rolled right and clearly wanted to throw it to his tight end. There was a linebacker in the end’s pocket for the entire route, though, so Hasselback just ran. The commentator called it a bootleg play. Is my defintion wrong or did the commentator misinterpret the play?
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In a vast majority of NFL games (with the exception of the Polumalu interception in the AFC championship game) there simply is not a horrible call that pretty much everyone can agree was poor officiating. In that sense, the Super Bowl was like a majority of NFL games. However, I thought the game was replete with questionable calls, all of which went against one team. In the controlled mayhem that is NFL football, you’re going to have questionable calls, it’s just part of the game. But when every questionable call goes against one team, it looks really bad. The pass interference was ticky-tack, a couple of the holds (and some none call holds) were ticky tack, and the Hasselback personal foul was baloney. It just seemed to me that every questionable call went against Seattle or for Pittsburg. I will say that it was clearly not the officials fault that Seattle lost, they played like crap and deserved to lose. But the officiating was too sloppy for the Super Bowl.

Stevens was one of the main reasons the 'Hawks sucked, so maybe Porter’s trash talking worked. Stevens dropped 3 passes, each of which was for a first down and one or two for big games. He was an absolute embarassment.

Now you’re just talking out your ass. Why in the world would you question Alexander’s toughness. Sure he’s not a thug, but he plays damn hard, gets the tough yardage, and played as well as he could.

Agreed. The dropped passes, the false starts, the poor passes. All made the Hawks look like a bush league team.

Yep. It was quite a letdown of a game. Pittsburg did not impress me all that much either though. I was happy they got the win for Ward, Bettis, Cowher, and the Rooney, but they certainly didn’t look like a Super Bowl team. Seattle handed them the game.

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I’m sick of Kid Rock and while Eminem would be a better choice, imagine the censoring that’d have to be done. And I like Eminem.

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Hmmm…I think Martz was in better shape than Belichick, so really just back to 2001-2. That’s an interesting trend though.

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Here is the problem on your interpretation. It is perfectly legal to roll through a blocker, what you can’t do is do that to the ball carrier. And he didn’t. That’s where the complaint is. That was a bad call.

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Oh, and don’t forget Roethlisberger’s second interception. That pick doesn’t get thrown and the Steelers are up by either 14 or 18 and the Seahawks will probably only get standard field position on the kickoff. That pick by Herndon probably kept the Seahawks alive.

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You’ve got it backwards, Carmen - it’s perfectly legal to hit the returner low (you’re just making a tackle), but you can’t roll through a blocker at the knees.

Did anybody else think that either Hasselbeck or Tobeck was tipping the snapcount in the third quarter? For five or six consecutive plays, the Steeler on their left side of the line (Haggans?) had a phenomenal jump. It looked to me like he was offsides a couple of times, but I couldn’t see the ball to really tell.

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Depends on the actual play call. It could have been an option pass; throw if it is there, run if it isn’t. Or Hasselback might have been working to freeze the linebacker. If you thought he was going to throw, so did the linebacker, who couldn’t then close on MH.

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Seahawks fan:

Not so sure allowing Rothlesberger’s TD was a good call but in the end, those 7 points didn’t mean the game. All the others that went against Seattle looked fair to me. I liked the fumble call on Hasselbeck that got reversed. I noticed that there didn’t seem to be a lot of big calls against the Steelers, but given that Seattle looked a bit sloppy I just figured they weren’t committing as many infractions.

I saw a number of missed passes that should have been caught, two for touchdowns in the endzone in the first half that were juuuuuuust out of bounds. There’s a lot of this & that, but overall I think the refs did a pretty good job and Seattle, while they made the Steelers earn the win, just didn’t play at 100%. So I guess I’m with the OP on this one.

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Do they have the freakin’ NFL rules anywhere online? All I could find on NFL.com was a pretty thin summary of the rules.

I don’t think the officiating was particularly bad. IMHO, the Seahawks should have gotten the TD that was disallowed due to offensive pass interference, but I can see that there’s a good argument the other way, too. Roethlisberger’s TD was a TD from the angle of the camera that was aimed straight down the end-zone line: while Ben was still on his feet, the ball described an arc that started and finished clearly outside the end zone, but in the middle of the arc, it sure looked like an inch or two of the ball was above an inch or two of the chalk stripe, and that’s all you need.

The other calls - well, the game turned on them a lot less than it did on things like, say, the Seahawks’ incredibly bad clock management during the first-half two-minute drill, their failure to run Alexander more (what did he get - ten carries? A good defense is going to be able to contain a guy like Alexander for ten carries), and a bunch of other stuff.