I caught this week's edition of HBO's Inside the NFL last night. They did a superb job of talking about the supposed "bad calls" in the Super Bowl. They started the program off by numbering the bad calls, showing each in slow motion and then dissecting exactly what happened on each play while giving their own opinions of whether they thought the call was good or bad. For those of you who don't know, the show is hosted by Bob Costas and the panel includes Dan Marino, Cris Collinsworth and Cris Carter. I've beaten these calls to death and I don't want to go through each one again, but the only one they all agreed was a bad call was the low block by Matt Hasselbeck. On the holding call to Locklear against Haggans, they split 2-2. On the other 3 suspect calls, all 4 agreed the refs made the right calls. Furthermore, the NFL released a statement saying they thought the officiating was on the money. Remember, it was just 3 short weeks ago that the NFL released a statement saying the Troy Polamalu interception should not have been overturned. The NFL will speak out when it feels a bad call was made.
Watching this show gave me a tad more insight into the game. It allowed me to see what Matt Hasselbeck saw when he threw the pick to Ike Taylor. Joey Porter had a relatively quiet game with the exception of making a pursuit tackle on Shawn Alexander that saved big yardage. I think he finished with 3 tackles. However, Seattle game planned for him so thats good in a way because it freed up other players to make plays. Since the Steeler rushers and blitzes had trouble getting to Hasselbeck who was going with 3 step drops and quick passes - LeBeau started rushing 3 and dropping 8 into coverage late in the game. On the pick, it looked like the ball just floated from most of the angles I saw, but the HBO show clearly pointed out that it was Joey Porter that caused the pick. He was at the line of scrimmage and then he drifted back into a zone to take the passing lane away from Hasselbeck. Not expecting to see Porter there, he had to float the ball over Porter to drop it in to his man. He put too much on it and it was picked by Taylor after sailing over the intended receivers head. Porter didn't get credit for that and it was a beautiful call by LeBeau.
One of the other things brought to light was that Hines Ward pushed off on one of his catches as well. Can't remember the exact play, but it may have been the shoestring catch. Collinsworth asked him about it in an interview and I think Hines explained that he didn't extend his arm - but he had a huge smile on his face while explaining the play.
All in all it was a good show. I especially liked how they stopped the Roethlisberger TD and drew a red line where the plane of the endzone started. This should have been on the front page of every newspaper's sports page on Monday as it was a really good look at where the ball was. Madden should have asked for the replay to be stopped so he could draw on the screen while the game was in progress. I still feel that the calls were like any other game and everything was simply magnified by the media throng and all of the casual fans watching who don't really know the rules of football. Just my two cents.
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