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

The BBQ Pit
81

Since everyone wants to whine about the PI call, and say that it isn’t called 9 out of 10 times…then find me ONE clip of a receiver pushing off like that, and getting a 2-3 step split on the DB right in front of the ref and it isn’t called.

What ISN’T called is when the DB and WR are running together down the sideline, and the receiver brushes his arm back against the DB, costing him a 1/2 step. It’s almost impossible for an official to call because he can’t see the lost ground. When a WR pushes off out of a cut, they invariably gain 2-3 steps…and it’s almost always called PI…you just don’t see it happen much.

The WR reached out, contacting Hope as he made his cut. Hope has to take a step back to steady himself, while the WR takes another step. Hope then has to regain the step he took back, while the WR takes another step. The contact, initiated by the WR, resulted in the WR gaining two steps, and the TD. You have to make that call. It LOOKS like there is little contact, and that’s correct. It doesn’t take much contact to knock a DB back a step, but if you are going to allow WRs to do that, the only red zone offense you will ever need is 5TEs running into the endzone, chucking the DBs, then turning away from the contact.

82

Why is it up to me? I have no idea whether the ball crossed the goal line or not. I haven’t argued one way or the other. YOU were the one who strolled into the thread claiming to have seen an image that “clearly” showed the ball crossing. Instead, you linked to a pathetically blurry piece of garbage. It’s YOUR contention, so YOU back it up.

83

I’m reminded of the Ravens-Giants Superbowl. The Giants scored a beautiful touchdown early on, but it was called back by holding. On replay, the announcers proclaimed it an awful, terrible call, which it clearly was.

The Giants then proceeded to stink up the joint, almost entirely because the Ravens played great football.

The only difference in this game? The Steelers played average football. Even that is enough to win when the other team sucks. And the Seahawks truly did suck.

Really it was the perfect end to the season. The playoffs were chock full of shitty games with bad officiating. How appropriate that the Superbowl was a shitty game with bad officiating.

For those who think the pass interference was a no-brainer because it was in front of the ref, you obviously didn’t watch many Giants games. Plaxico did that all season long, on every single play. He was called maybe 4 times all season.

What a craptastically awful NFL postseason. Hopefully next year will be worth watching. This year certainly wasn’t.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. As a Giants fan, what do I think of the fact that the Seahawks missed their field goals? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That was gratifying. One local listener had called in before the game and said “I’m a Giants fan, and I hope the Seahawks miss every field goal they attempt. It would serve them right!” hehheh, well played, karma.

I’m embarassed for the NFC this year. The scrotty fucking Seahawks was the best we could muster? Pathetic. Judging by the way the Steelers played in the Superbowl, the following teams – if considering the regular season only – would have destroyed them:

Redskins
Cowboys
Giants
Panthers
Bears
Bucs

Hell, the regular season Steelers would have crushed the team that took the field on Sunday.

As far as sports fans go, the NFL fans will be the quiet ones not talking shit for the next few months. Even NASCAR puts out a better product than this.

84

Mmm…

Well, first off, I’d like to say that I never really expected the Seahawks to actually win this thing. All the credit in the world for putting together a phenomenal season, but nobody goes from faceless doormat to king of the world that damn fast (felt the same way about the Bengals, BTW). I know nobody wants to admit it, but there’s no shame in second place, especially for a franchise that’s never had any major accomplishments before now.

There’ll be another time. And if there isn’t…well, at least the Mariners have a little company. :smiley:

Seriously, though, I saw the game, and the biggest impression I got was lack of excitement and way, waaaay too many sloppy plays. It’s a damn shame the refs had to appear so biased (whether they actually were or not, I don’t know). Seattle never gave me the impression that they were championship material, so the net result was referees trashing their careers for nothing and a game that could’ve been an okay contest becoming yet another second half snoozer.

It’s regrettable that Pittsburgh couldn’t have erased all doubts, but there’s been grumbling about incompetent refs for years now, and I think the sad conclusion is that things aren’t ever going to get any better. It’s like the lack of a legitimate champ in the college game. Just gotta learn to accept it or find some other sport.

85

Are you being deliberately obtuse or are you actually a moron? Yes, the photo could be clearer. However it is plainly and evidently a photo of the ball across the goal line. What you can’t tell from the still, but is easy to see on video replay, is that Roethlisberger was in control of the ball as it crossed the goal line (breaking the goal line plane and control are the two things necessary for a TD.)

Ellis Dee, what do you mean “based on the regular season” these teams would have beat the Steelers on Sunday? Do you mean if those teams gave a good effort they’d have one, or merely an average effort? Because if it’s the latter, I don’t know if I agree.

Officiating did not even arguably cost Seattle the game. They might have gotten the short end of the stick on a couple calls, but they lost because they choked.

86

Remember what I’m asking. Were you certain? Would you have been shocked if on replay it showed he did make it, but barely?

87

I mean that the quality of play those teams fielded in the regular season was superior to the quality of play from either team in the Superbowl. For completeness sake, the AFC had even more:

Patriots
Colts
Chargers
Steelers
Broncos
Jaguars
Bengals

By my count, the regular season showed us 13 teams that demonstrated higher quality football than we got in the Superbowl. The Steelers should be grateful that the Chargers didn’t make the postseason, but would the Chargers have fared any better? The Seahawks choked bigtime, and for that matter so did the Giants, Panthers, Bears, Colts, Patriots, Redskins, Broncos, Bengals, Bucs, and Jaguars. That’s the problem; nobody won anything, but instead everybody just choked away their opportunity. The Steelers had the good fortune to choke away their opportunity when their opponent, the Seahawks, choked it away even more aggressively.

In fairness, the Steelers did earn a quality win by playing at a high level against the Colts. But against the Bengals, Broncos and Seahawks? Not so much. And even in the Colts game, Indy gave it away at the end. The Steelers certainly didn’t take it from them; Bettis did everything he could to keep them in the game.

Rank the 40 Superbowl winners from best to worst based solely on performance in the Superbowl, and the Steelers of '05 would probably rank dead last. There were probably a couple dozen Superbowl losers that played better than the Steelers of 05. And as I said before, their performance ranks below the typical performance of at least a dozen or so teams from the regular season, including their own.

It was a crappy postseason, capped by a crappy Superbowl, with the world champs earning the title by playing a crappy game. The 2005 NFL experience blew chunks.

88

I thought you first had a point, but I think you stretched it too far in this post. I agree that the Steelers played a sub-par game, and in fantasy land, would have been beaten by the Steelers of the regular season. I think you cannot simply set aside that playing in the Superbowl will affect the quality of the performance, and the Steelers took a long time adapting to the circumstances. They were fortunate enough to have an opponent against whom they could do that. But you had Hines Ward dropping balls, Ben floating interceptions - very sloppy, and very unlike what they achieved in their other post-season games.

One reason why the Chargers didn’t make it, and arguably the reason? They were beaten by the Steelers, at home, on a Monday night, when they were being heralded as the AFC contender and LaDanian Tomlinson was going to tear up the defense. The Chargers were beaten more soundly than the score would suggest, to.

This I don’t understand. The first half of the Bengals game, yeah, we were not playing to the caliber that we achieved in the next two games, but the second half we were dominating. I’m not sure how you can look at the Broncos game and not feel that the Steelers dominated a good opponent there.

So, after Bettis gave it away the Colts gave it away? I suppose. I think that our defense stepped up to hold the Colts to a long field goal attempt. McFadden in particular made a beautiful play to break up a touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne.

With some quibbles, I would agree.

But to go back to one of your arguments from your previous post, I don’t think that the argument that “Plaxico gets away with it regularly” is a good excuse. Capa84 nailed it. Oftentimes, a push during a pass play can be (mis)interpreted because the players are in motion running routes and the effect of the push is to just slow the defender a tad. Here, the two were essentially stopped, the effect of the push was to send the players in opposing directions, and I would argue that he might not have gotten to the ball without the momentum of pushing off. The only problem is that the ref missed the flag on his first couple of attempts to yank it out, making it look like there was more consideration on his part as to what he should call.

89

Hey, look, I’m a Lakers fan. I have no problem whatsoever with a team bitching about the officiating until they start getting sympathy calls. I also have experience in watching another team outplay yours in a key playoff game and having your team get bailed out by the refs. It’s sports, that stuff happens and nobody’s going to change the results in the recordbooks. However, it also doesn’t mean that I blindly deny that it happened just because it was my team that received the vast majority of the shaky calls.

90

I think that the Roethlisberger TD was not a bad call. Debatable, but not bad. I think that the Seahawks definitely got the short end of the stick on a couple of calls, perhaps costing them a couple of TDs. I totally agree with NothingMan that the refs should be invisible and as close to perfect as possible in a game like this.

However, despite all that, the Seahawks had plenty of other opportunities to score those two TDs and they didn’t, so for me, the bottom line is meh.

Still, the NFL has a big ref problem and they need to fix it, pronto, or their credibility is shot.

91

I’m a Seahawks fan, but I’m not going to claim we were robbed, because no matter how loud a sports fan says that sort of thing, it never changes the result of the game, and it never stops sounding like sour grapes. I thought those calls sucked. But a good team overcomes bad calls to win the game anyway.

The fact of the matter is that, yes, had that Roethlisberger touchdown been called back or had the pass interference touchdown been awarded, it would have been a very different game. But, then again, if Seattle had got their clock management down, if they’d managed to convert their last drive of the first half into points or if Hasselbeck had not given the Steelers an interception when the score was 14-10, we could be looking at the Vince Lombardi trophy sitting pretty in the Pacific Northwest. But that’s not what happened. Congratulations to the Steelers. All Seattle can do is wait for next season.

But it still hurts to think that poor officiating had any outcome on the game. Sure, the Seahawks didn’t do enough to win the game. But even if a few of the blown calls had gone their way, or some of their critical plays did turn into points, and Seattle had won, no-one would be saying now, “wow, the Steelers were robbed.” Seattle mightn’t have done enough to win it, but no-one can really suggest that the Steelers dominated that game. If the Seahawks had to have their best season ever close in such an anti-climactic manner, I would have liked it to have been because they were genuinely outplayed, rather than this situation where they sucked a bit more than the opposition and they got the bad end of some very contentious calls.

But you know - against any other team, I would have been happy to see the Steelers win, and they did do some very fine plays. That last touchdown of theirs was a mix of “Oh fuck!!” and “Damn, they’re good,” for me.

92

Perhaps too tangential to this thread, but how about Holmgren not coming out to shake Cowher’s hand at the end of the game? He then got straight off the plane in Seattle to bitch about the officiating. What a classless asshole.

93

I was wondering why we didn’t see the traditional handshake. What a dick.

94

We were collectively shocked on the replay it was as close as it was. We were all sure he got stopped on the live play.
Three of us were 6 feet from a 37" Plasma if that helps.
We also thought we saw enough to overturn the call.
Only 1 out of the 4 of us said, “I don’t know, I think he was stopped but the booth might not overturn it.”

Again, I blame the **crappy ** Seattle play more than the **crappy ** officiating.

Jim

95

Sorry for the double post.
Holmgren is a jerk and he proved he was a bad coach with his handling of the 2 minute drills. Pathetic. Reminds me of Jim Fassell, who I wanted gone from the Giants for years.

Jim

96

I didn’t notice that. That definitely is a dick move.

97

Two excellent points.

Pitt won because they were able to execute the few good plays they had to either score or get into position to score. Without those 3 or 4 plays going good, no SB XL win. And Seattle? They couldn’t even get the 3 or 4 plays to start.

So, Steelers fans, enough of the taunts. Your team played just barely good enough to win this one. After three amazing playoff games from them, this really surprised me. And let’s not forget the awesome regular season finish. Where were THOSE guys in this game?

And Seattle fans… Just like the Oilers of the 70s, Pitt got the better of you. Maybe there was a bad call or two. It’s not like no one had a chance to overcome those. Push off in the endzone? Maybe a bad interpretation of the rule. But why does it hinge on that? The Seahawks scored all season long after having scores erased. Why not in this game? Where were THOSE guys?

Man, this Superbowl sucked. But there was a winner. Now let’s all watch basketball or something.

98

Pitchers and Catchers report in 9 days, 1 hour, 26 min and 40 seconds.
as per Yankees.com

99

Come on. I’d be excited about that, but I live in Pittsburgh. We have the coming of spring and the eternal hope for a .500 season!

100

But you got the great new prospect, uh wait no that’s Toronto. You signed those good free agent pitchers, No wait, not Pittsburg.
Well you just won the Superbowl. Remember that feeling everytime the Pirates lose.
I have started studying the NL Central yet, but you’re right, the Pirates will be lucky to get to .500
Actually I have really only looked at the AL and the NL East in depth. Maybe it is time to start the baseball threads up?

Jim