"Heard too many Seattle people grousing about the officials after the game. There were a couple of marginal calls -- the Darrell Jackson end-zone pushoff, which negated a touchdown, most notably --but Seattle did quite enough to lose the game." That was from Peter King's Monday Morning QB column onNFL.com. He is Sports Illustrated's lead NFL writer and does stuff for HBO also. In the industry, one of the biggest names and most respected people in footall media......and NOT a Steelers fan.
This is my take: I waited until I had about 6 emails from chuckleheads telling me the Steelers didn't deserve to win before I decided to fire back. Let's look again.....
When big plays HAD to be made, the Steelers made them.They had KEY 3rd down conversions. Seattle was 5 of 17. The had 3 very timely sacks when they needed them. Gardocki consistently dropped theball inside the 20 on punts. Seattle's punter did not. The Steelers nor the officials had anything to do with Seattle's inability to manage the clock at the end of the game and at the end of the first half. The Steelers nor the officials had anything to do with Seattle missing 2 FGs. Now, had Seattle done all of those things, maybe they could have won...but I still say they would not have punched the ball in the endzone. They had multiple chances to do it and couldn't. The Steelers adjusted their rushing attack at halftime and scored on the 2nd play out of the tunnel. Jeremy Stevens couldnt catch a cold in the middle of the winter. He was clearly intimidated by the hit Chris Hope put on him early in the game. In essence, the Steelers gave Seattle (the league's most potent offense) the ball twice and they still only scored 10 points. The calls? The officiating? The Big Ben TD was in. No doubt in my mind. From where the ball was in his arms, it had to cross the line. Every announcer/talking head agreed with this call....except some idiotic fans who watch 2 games a year who think it's where the ball ends up - not that the forward progress of the ball only has to break the very first speck of white paint outline to be a TD. The D-Jack catch out of bounds when his foot hit the pylon......this was explained on Sirius satellite's NFL show today to those who again do not know the rules of the game. He has to have control and have 2 feet in BEFORE the pylon becomes part of the field to him as a ball carrier. Next!
The D-Jack offensive pass interference call. This WAS ticky-tacky and didn't seem to influence the play that much...but he DID EXTEND his elbow right in front of the ref. Easy call? No. Could have went either way probably....but he DID push off even if ever-so-slightly and in slow motion it's one thing, but if you look again in realtime...you can actually see/feel the advantage gained by him propelling himself in the opposite direction. He did it...he didnt have to. If he doesn't touch him, it's still probably a TD...so I wouldn't complain about the refs, I'd complain about D-Jack himself.
Of the 2 holding calls, the ref does not know if the pass will be incomplete, a long gain or a td when he throws the flag. How on earth does the ref know a catch is going to be made at the one when he throws the flag? On the first one as Madden pointed out, the arm was hooked - holding. On the second one, I admit, I saw no holding on the guy they called it on. Doesn't mean the ref didn't see holding somewhere else. The low block on Hasselbeck? Cheap call I thought, although it is the letter of the law. Just like the tuck rule during the infamous Pats/Raiders game - it's a rule so it has to be called until the rule is changed.
What about the Jeremy Stevens "catch" when he took 3 steps and got popped and they didnt call it a catch? The people who are crying "bad calls" only to seem to be against Pittsburgh who had bad calls against them all year...BUT THEY STILL FOUND A WAY TO WIN. What about Wards' 2 drops. What about Ike Taylor's dropped pick? The Steelers had a multitude of chances also that they blew. It wasn't just Seattle. This was NOT a crisp game by either team to say the least. For Pittsburgh to have 2 picks against them, dropped passes, no offensive synch at all facing the league's MVP and best offense and to still win 21-10 proves to me that they are resilient and can still win when faced with adversity. If your QB who is averaging a passer rating of 130 in the playoffs puts up a 9-21 performance with a 23 rating and you STILL win, you did something right. As bad as a statistical game as he had....he made HUGE plays to get them there and he made HUGE plays in that game when he had to. To not cross the line and find Ward was HUGE. To run for the TD was huge. To run for a clock killing 1st down near the end of the game was huge. The block on the reverse pass was HUGE. He is a 2nd year player who will only get better. Can't believe some of the negative things some people said about him today. He had a below average game and his team still won. How many teams can survive that?
Would have been interesting if Stevens caught all those balls and they didn't have so many penalties called against them. Does that guarantee a win? NO! The game would have been different and would have been played out differently - but who knows what the result would have been? The Steelers were resilient down the stretch and all through the playoffs. To assume they would have lost if Seattle would have just (fill in the blank) is (fill in an expletive) in my estimation. You can "if" your way to the Super Bowl - but you can't win it with "if's".
Important things to wonder: Why didn't Seattle sense the gadget play after the Colts game? I told my cousin a month ago after the Colts game that the Steelers would line up the same way in a future game and instead of Randle El passing it back to Ben he would throw it because they haven't done that yet this year in that exact order. BANG! I called it. Other Steeler fans called it. Why on God's green earth didn't Holmgren know it was coming? Bettis told Parker on the sideline to stop going for the edge and to cut one up when he saw the hole. BANG! TD! Why didn't Seattle assume he would adjust? On 3rd and long in desperate situations, this supposedly AWESOME Seattle line couldn't stop Hasselbeck from getting sacked. With 6:50 remaining and knowing the Steelers are going to try to run out the clock, why couldn't they prevent the first downs?
I'm not quite sure again why some people thought they didn't do enough to win. The calls? I don't think so. Give them the D-Jack TD and they still need another one. Steeler fans could just as easily say "had Ben put ANY air under that pass near the goaline (or simply threw it away) and the score is at worst 17-3 and maybe 21-3 instead of 14-10. The game is what it is - a Super Bowl Victory for clearly the best team in the NFL right now.
Final thought: If you watched the Colts/Steelers game, you saw after the horrible call on Troy Polamalu's pick that he simply put his helmet on and ran back onto the field to line up for the next play. No complaining. He went right back to work. I think the Seachickens players couldn't do that after they thought they had been wronged. It's all about focus.
