Michael Smith: Seahawks Robbed
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playof...t&lid=tab1pos2

J D Sal

i'd say the officiating was poor all game. since these are statiscally The Best Football Officials On The Planet, it was surprising to watch, almost every call. a couple of geeks with a slide rule would have a blast with that game.
the playcalling in the 1st quarter was the worst i'd seen since i watched UConn vs Buffalo.
it was so slanted towardd steelers cowher is, i'm sure, still thanking The Lord. did it change who won the game? i think so. but both teams were doing such crazy stuff with the football. i dunno. the score sheet that seattle gave it up twice, and the steelers once. but it seemed to me that the ball was on the carpet 5-6 times. i can't remember a coll on those plays that didn't go to the steelers.
it was truly incredible.
i'd have gotten hold of the officials right after the game and subjected them to some serious "interrogation".

Great article
 

Michael Smith is on fire. What a great article, I agree with him 100%!!!

Oh, I am so glad that articles like these are appearing today! We were all going nuts in the game thread and it's good to know we were not alone. Mike and Mike this morning stopped short of saying the fix was in, but they did rant about the officiating, so every little bit helps.

Truth be told, I thought my article's opinion was in the minority and would come off as sour grapes. Smith basically echoed a lot of my sentiments, and for that I appreciate it.

Bob G

Bob -
You aren't in the minority. Within a few hours of the game, there were articles up on the the NY Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, and Fox News regarding the poor officiating.

I also was watching a repeat of a pregame show on ESPN 2 last night that had Wilbon, Ablom and 2 others on it and they ended the show saying that the NFL had to make sure this game didn't get decided by the referees. I found it to be almost prophetic.

I think it's a bit much to say Seattle got robbed.. I mean, they did plenty to lose that game themselves. Robbed usually means the thief broke into your house past locked doors and windows. I'd say that while a thief did clean the Hawks out, Seattle left the doors not only unlocked but standing wide open.

Was it a snow job? Absolutely. The officials were one sided and completely inept (but conveniently only inept for when it hurt Seattle).
Were they robbed? It's debateable, but they did alot to try and lose that game all by themselves. I guess it's still robbery even if you leave your doors open, but can you really blame the thief?

I agreed with him up until this point:

That's just weak.

Sure, we made some mistakes that ended up having bigger consequences than Seattle's (and it's not fair to cite all 5 as mistakes), but the bottom line is that outside of those 5 plays we outplayed the Broncos by a far bigger margin than Seattle outplayed Pitt. Just because Seattle turned it over "just once" doesn't mean they didn't play like garbage when they had to play well.

At least the penalties in our game directly lead to Bronco touchdowns (ball on the 1), while the ones against Seattle simply pushed the Seahawks further from the endzone... but still in range of it.

In any case, him saying that is just rubbing salt in the wound for me whether he is right or not.

Wow, this is the first time since the seasons start that I've been pleased by Michael Smith.