[Steve_Seattle]

I looked up the stats on the Seahawk penalties. Nearly half - 65 of 144 penalties - were for procedural things like offside, delay of game, neutral zone infractions, false starts, etc. They were typically well-above the league average in those sorts of things. For the kinds of fouls that people might call "cheating" - holding, roughing the passer, pass interference, etc. - they were typically in the middle of the pack.

By the way, although their game opponents only had 80 penalties called against them, the league average is 110 penalties per team. So it would be as easy to say that officials are biased against Seattle as to say that Seattle cheats more than others. Do teams suddenly play cleaner when they play the Seahawks? I doubt it.

[Colofornian]

They were typically well-above the league average in those sorts of things. For the kinds of fouls that people might call "cheating" - holding, roughing the passer, pass interference, etc. - they were typically in the middle of the pack.

Sorry. But this is playing with nuances that just doesn't hold up.

Sando of ESPN says the Seahawks were 5th in defensive holding. "Middle of pack" is at least double digits in a 32-team league.

And to tout the Seahawks for their "roughing the passer" respect of QBs -- while the Seahawks the past 3 seasons have been calling for 35 roughing penalties of players including and beyond the QB -- frankly carries quite a bit of hubris (or ignorance) on your part.

No NFL team comes close to the roughing penalties the Seahawks have had these past 3 seasons.