Yellow Flags Rule the Day

The Seattle Times Home Page: "

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Mistakes plague Hawks in first shot at title
Steelers take advantage of penalties and interceptions to win the franchise's fifth NFL championship."

So what happened?

Well the Steelers played good ball. Props to them for that. The Seahawks played good ball, too, however. They seemed to make some big mistakes in the the last minute of each half, unfortunately.

Okay, so someone may need to review the basics of holding with the Seahawks, because they had a number of silly penalties early on. The Seahawks made a number of mistakes with penalties, but this game really hinged on a few yellow handkerchiefs.

One was the offensive pass interference call against the Seahawks that cost them a touch down. That one was taken away when the receiver shoved a defender out of the way.

But the call that gave the Steelers their first touchdown was bogus. They never crossed the goal before being down. The refs ruled the other way, however, and chose not to overturn it on replay. Bogus call.

The other call was the one where Matt Hasselback was called for blocking below the waist after the late game interception. That call handed Pittsburgh and extra 10 yards and was bogus. It's not a block when your trying to tackle some one.

A couple of bad calls combined with a few reasonable ones really cost the Seahawks.

The Steeler defense played well. The offense didn't really make a lot happen. They scored often on accident, not really moving the ball or playing solid offense. The benefited from a couple Seahawks errors and some generous officiating.

But there's always next year. Within the next 12 months, we should see the Seahawks win Superbowl XLI, the Yankees win the next world series, and the Carroll College Fighting Saints win the Rose Bowl.