Folks in Seattle are a bunch of liberal weenies. They whined about Gore and then Kerry losing, and now this.


(Hmmm. thought we had a smiley of a little guy holding a sign saying "STFU". Must have been some other vBulletin board that I frequent. Just imagine one of those following the above sentence. Thanx muchly.)

I watched the replay of the Rothlisberger TD about ten times, and each time, to me (who is by no means any sort of referee, but I did have my glasses on), it appeared that his initial lunge into the tacklers placed the nose of the ball *just* over the edge of the goal line. Keep in mind that the ball does not have to cross the "back" of the line, but just the the front. If any part of the ball breaks the invisible vertical plane which extends upwards from the beginning of the goal line where it meets the space on the field between the 1 yard line and the goal line...it is a touchdown.

As to the push off, it was a bit lame, but the receiver *did* push off. He stuck his hand on the defender's chest, and pushed off. Granted, it was incredibly gentle, more of a move to ensure that he had an arm's length of space with which to work, but the rule doesn't differentiate in that way.

The call on Hasselbeck was demonstrably incorrect, but I didn't see that play for some reason. I do find most of the arguments citing that penalty as a major difference in the game to be a bit weak. The Seahawks didn't bring their A game, and the two biggest plays against them were catastrophic defense failures, one of which - the "gadget" pass by El for the TD - they had specifically practiced preventing.

It wasn't a stellar officiating effort, I won't argue that, but I dispute that the officials won the game for Pittsburgh. If it had been the Chiefs in the Super Bowl instead of the Seahawks, and they had gotten those same calls and non-calls, you can bet I'd feel differently, because I would then not be at all objective...I'd be a ravenous fan with veins dangling from my teeth. :worried:

Spode nailed it. Seahawk fans need to realize that their defenders were overpursuing. If the game wasn't going the Steelers way, they would have had to take advantage of that more. They would have. if Pburg had those calls agin'em I'd whine but I'd be wrong.

That said, do we really need the week off and the evening game? Those things conspire to make a crap game.