Let it go Seattle, let it go.
Posted on 05/22/2006 3:01:34 PM PDT by mainepatsfan
Seeking closure Seahawks air gripes over Super Bowl calls with NFL
Posted: Monday May 22, 2006 8:19AM; Updated: Monday May 22, 2006 11:13AM
Last Wednesday, exactly 100 days after the Seahawks fell to the Steelers in Super Bowl XL, NFL director of officiating Mike Pereira boarded a plane for Seattle. Truth be told, he was a little apprehensive. That's putting it mildly.
"Oh, we're loaded up for Mike,'' Seattle coach Mike Holmgren said of Pereira's visit the day before he arrived.
Pereira was going into the same kind of road venue North Carolina enters at Duke, the Red Sox walk into at Yankee Stadium, the Cowboys experience at Philadelphia. Overly dramatic? I don't think so. This was nothing less than the 268th game of the 2005 NFL season. It wasn't at Qwest Field. It wasn't played with either fanfare (no one has reported it until now) or fans. But butterflies were in the stomachs of some of the people in the room before this game began in a meeting room at the Seahawks' training complex in suburban Kirkland.
Someone from the NFL visits every team in the spring to discuss the rules changes and clarifications and points of emphasis for the coming season. It would have been easy for Pereira, knowing that the Seahawks still feel they got screwed by the officiating in Pittsburgh's 21-10 championship win, to dispatch an aide to Seattle for this year's seminar. That would have been the chicken way out, though, and Pereira knew it. So last Thursday at 9 a.m. sharp, on the second day of an Oakland-Seattle swing, he walked into the meeting room and looked at a sea of unhappy faces. Call it Sixteen Angry Men.
(Excerpt) Read more at sportsillustrated.cnn.com ...
They didn't mention it because replay shows it was obviously the right call, he pushed off, propeled the cover man backwards, and gained seperation with the move. All done within 10 feet of a ref.
If nothing else, he'll give Culpepper some competition. That's fine with me.
The league is full of players who bloomed once they escaped the Ford Family Asylum.... And Harrington certainly has incentive. At least he carried himself with class despite his stress during his time with the Lions.
From the interviews I've read since he left for Miami, the "devil may care" attitude of last season came about because he previously was very hard on himself for his performance, and it was tearing him up inside. I don't think it makes that attitude right, but maybe understandable. So many things went psycho for the Lions this year - not just with Joey.
Regarding the Super Bowl, yes the officials were horrible, but the Seahawks stunk up the place a bit more than the Steelers that day too. Ironically, the one thing that looked good coming out of Super Bowl XL was the City of Detroit!
Joey will always be a backup. What does it tell you about Joey when he turned down a deal with the Browns- where he would have been the starter, to be a back up in Miami to a QB who has an entirely different offensive style- let alone the fact that Joey was only valuable enough to the Fins for a 7th round draft pick? Hell, the Browns would have given a 4th for him. Joey is a pansy ass cry baby. He'll fit it nicely in South Beach.
On the Roth touchdown, the referee called the TD on Roth's push after he was completely on the ground. I thought the ref blew that call, but got it right, accidentally. The ball made it over the line early, but the line judge missed it. He called the touchdown that didn't happen, and missed the one that did. He claimed that he just made the wrong hand motion initially, but that was obviously a lie. If he had seen the initial ball go over the goal line, he should have blown the whistle and stopped the play at the point in time that he claimed the ball went over the line. He didn't.
I didn't think the refs were cheating, I just thought it was a horribly called game that definitely favored the Steelers. In the long run, it hurt the Steelers as much as the Hawks, as it's tainted their victory. Everybody likes to talk about great Super Bowl victories, but whenever anyone talks about this one, the story is the cr@ppy officiating.
If the Seahawks get a big chip on their shoulder, they could come on like gangbusters. Teams play better when they're mad. The Steelers cried all over the place after the Colts game over the interception call, but they elevated their game after that.
I can very easily imagine that :-)
The Steelers have been mentioned... I think this should be moved to breaking news... ;)
And it's against the rules every time. If he had clear position then he shouldn't have pushed off. Michael Irvin is one of the reasons the offensive interference rule clearly calls out pushing off, so his whining should be considered proof that it was indeed against the rules.
No it wasn't incidental contact, and it wasn't defensive interference. The receiver pushed and gained seperation, that is textbook OFFENSIVE interference, nobody grabble the receiver.
The ref called the TD, as to why he called it a TD I don't pretend to be a mind reader, and that's the only way to determine exactly why he did.
Some bad calls favored Seattle. Like the Seattle catch and fumble that was most likely to be recovered by a Steeler but was called an incompletion. Then there's the offensive interference call that went against the Steelers on their first TD drive. The difference is the Steelers overcame the calls and Seattle didn't. Actually the real difference is Seattle just couldn't manage to finish a drive, they did a ood job of getting the ball to mid-field but kept stalling outside scoring range. The victory isn't tainted, they get the statue, actually 90% of the current talk about that game is about how the Steelers joined the 5 Lombardi club. Only reason this one is talking about the officiating is because the annual ref visit is the impetus of the story.
Actually only Joey Porter complained about the officiating, the Steelers are used to getting slapped around by the officials having had the league admit mistakes in the final minutes of 4 different games in 1 season. Everybody else focused on the game saving tackle, until Tuesday when focus went to the Broncos. Smart teams put the past in the past and focus on the next game, there's nothing you can ever do to win the previous game.
Not in the normal sense. Harrington is only the backup, but the better Harrington plays, the better Daunte has to play if he wants to start sooner.
I'm seeing the signs of a Saban-orchestrated competition for starter. Harrington will do his best to get "one more week, one more week."
Boy, I agree. What really should be unnerving to Seahawk fans is that this is the coaches who are still living in the past. A coach's job is to always be thinking about what comes next.
yep.....pretty much
Somehow I don't see a QB controvery developing down there.
Oh, there's no controversy, and there won't be one. I just see Harrington doing his best to keep starting, which means Daunte will have to push himself harder to show that he's ready to start.
Interference could only be called if the ball was in the air. It wasn't. The QB was out of the pocket and still had the ball -- hence, the 5-yard bump penalty (holding) can not be called. Once the QB leaves the pocket, the DBs can bump all they want until the ball is in the air.
It was incidental contact, but the Steeler DB grabbed the Seattle player's arm. The Seattle player pushed off, but only after the Steeler player grabbed him.
The Steeler bumped him before they got to the endzone, but as said above, with the QB out of the pocket, he's allowed to give bumps against the receiver. After they came to a complete stop in the endzone, the Seattle receiver pushed off hard enough to move the defender's feet and contrary to what the "let them play" types scream, that penalty will be called every time it is seen. It was not "incidental" contact. It was a push and far too hard of a push to be ignored or called "incidental" anywhere on the filed.
The receiver did two things wrong. 1. He pushed too damn hard. He could have gained the necessary separation without putting his weight into it and literally moving the DB backward.
2. He did it in the endzone with the back judge only a few yards away. The back judge couldn't possibly miss it and every NFL official would have made the exact same call.
Just poor coaching. Teach the guy how and where on the field to push off. Good receivers know how to do it without getting flagged and they know that the endzone with the official right close by is not the place to do it.
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