These Calls Weren’t for the Birds

It wasn’t so much the swirling yellow towels that frustrated the Seattle Seahawks in their 21-10 Super Bowl defeat to Pittsburgh.

It was the raining yellow flags, some of which will be debated into the foreseeable future.

A day after the loss, Seahawk Coach Mike Holmgren was still simmering over what he saw as poor officiating.

“We knew it was going to be tough going against the Pittsburgh Steelers,” Holmgren told fans at a rally at Qwest Field in Seattle. “I didn’t know we were going to have to go against the guys in the striped shirts as well.”

Seahawk players were no less critical after the game.

“Garbage, bad call,” Seahawk tackle Sean Locklear told reporters late Sunday when asked about a holding call on him that wiped out an 17-yard catch by Jerramy Stevens that would have given Seattle the ball at the Pittsburgh one.

The play came early in the fourth quarter, when the Seahawks were trailing, 14-10. And it came immediately after what quarterback Matt Hasselbeck thought was another missed call on the same snap.

“I thought it was a free play,” Hasselbeck said. “I thought they were offsides. That wasn’t the case. It was disappointing, very disappointing. It was a four-point game at that point; we really had a chance.”

Hasselbeck said that penalty was “absolutely the turning point in the game.”

The league had no comment about the officiating on Monday. Many league executives were in transit, and telephone messages to Mike Pereira, the NFL’s supervisor of officials, were not returned.

But the holding call on Locklear was only one among several controversial calls, including another three snaps later, after Pittsburgh’s Ike Taylor ended the scoring threat by intercepting a Hasselbeck pass at the five. On the run back, Hasselbeck was flagged for throwing an illegal block below the waist, tacking on penalty yardage that moved the ball near midfield.

Holmgren said earlier Monday that he hadn’t seen replays of the call, but pointed out that the rule against blocking below the waist was instituted “to protect the players on a change of possession” and that “it’s usually called against the receiving team that was blocking for” the interception return.

Holmgren said Hasselbeck “was trying to make the tackle,” which, in fact, he did. Regardless, it cost Seattle 15 yards because, a league source said, officials on the field determined that the Seahawk quarterback was aiming to take out a blocker on the return, not the ballcarrier.

There was also an apparent touchdown pass from Hasselbeck to Darrell Jackson in the first quarter, one that would have given Seattle a 7-0 lead. The play was nullified by a pass-interference call on Jackson for pushing off. Replays seemed inconclusive and showed both players, Jackson and safety Chris Hope, pushing each other.

The most scrutinized play was the touchdown run by Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, which came near the end of the first half. The official at the goal line ruled it a touchdown, although the Seahawks argued that linebacker D.D. Lewis stopped him just short.

Because it happened just inside of the two-minute mark, the officials had the choice of reviewing the play, which they did.

After looking at the tape, referee Bill Leavy did not overturn the call. Holmgren was still pleading his case as the teams walked off the field at halftime.

That touchdown came on third down, however, and had the referee overturned the call on the field, Pittsburgh would have had one more play mere inches from the goal line.

Seattle was penalized seven times for 70 yards in the game; Pittsburgh three times for 20 yards.

Holmgren termed the number of penalties against his team “unusual.”

“Our team is not a very penalized team in general,” he said. “And in Super Bowls ... they’ve kind of let the guys play. When you put those two things together, it was a little unusual. And they were very, very costly.

“But anything I say sounds like an excuse. We had our chances.”

As for the officials, they surely weren’t happy with their result either. Before the game, the NFL’s Pereira told the Associated Press that an officiating crew’s goal is “to be anonymous.”

“What we want to do is to pick up the paper Monday and read about the game, not the officiating,” he said.