BLUE 1,026 Posted October 20, 2014 Posted by Josh Alper on October 20, 2014, 6:14 AM EDT The Seahawks had several special teams breakdowns against the Rams on Sunday, their offense was a non-factor until they were already down 18 points and their defense let the Rams go 80 yards in four minutes in the fourth quarter to slow down Seattle’s comeback attempt. Despite all of that, safety Earl Thomas thinks something else is to blame for the team’s second straight loss. Thomas looked in the direction of the officials, who ruled that the Rams should retain possession after a late fumble by Rams running back Tre Mason on a play that the Seahawks felt was judged incorrectly. The ruling on the field was that the Rams recovered and NFL officiating head Dean Blandino explained that all angles were reviewed and there was no clear visual evidence of who came up with the ball. “Player coming out of pile w/loose ball is not a clear recovery. Need video evidence of him gaining possession. Play was reviewed in NY,” Blandino wrote on Twitter. Thomas saw something more nefarious at play, however, and said that the team is “battling the officials” in addition to the opposing team right now. “Yeah. At least give us a shot. But you know what? I’m not surprised with the referees this season. If you really look at some plays, we’re playing more than our opponents. We’re playing the referees too. I don’t care what anybody is saying. Something is wrong. That needs to be brought up,” Thomas said, via the Seattle Times. “It’s kind of crazy how football is turning out now. You give a guy, just because he wears a white and black shirt, he has authority of the game. Man, they need to stay out of it — that’s my key — and let us dominate.” If the Seahawks were truly dominating the Rams on Sunday, there wouldn’t have been a place for the officials to impact the outcome of the game. For the second straight week, though, the Seahawks struggled for stretches in all areas of the game and that explains the 28-26 loss a lot more easily than the ruling on a disputed fumble recovery or anything else. Source: ProFootballTalk Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vin+ 3,121 Posted October 20, 2014 I agree. Head slaps for everyone! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sarge+ 3,436 Posted October 20, 2014 TIL Bware is one of the best safeties in the game of football. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bay 2,003 Posted October 21, 2014 Don't want to hear it, Earl. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BwareDWare94 723 Posted October 21, 2014 They're not playing the refs at all lol. Nevertheless, this "clear recovery" thing is a silly rule. If you don't see either team clearly recover the ball, it should come down to who came out of the pile with it. Some of the NFL's "simplification" rules make things much more complicated than necessary. The Seahawks came up with the ball. It was a fumble. It should have been their ball. No question. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BC 331 Posted October 21, 2014 (edited) Don't need a thread here. ET is frustrated they didn't take a look at the loose ball play at the end given that the game was within 2 points, and there was less than a minute on the clock. You'd think it would be at least looked at. It's only the fate of the game that's at stake. Earl's a good guy who's said everything right since he's been here. Edited October 21, 2014 by BC 1 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Favre4Ever+ 4,476 Posted October 21, 2014 Doesn't matter either way, from the way I look at it. Look at the Seahawks reaction to the Fail Mary, for example. The guys on the field had to call it and they called it the way they saw it. It didn’t work out for you guys and it worked out for us. We had a great celebration on it. Refs called it like they saw it. You can't have your cake and eat it too, Seattle. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seanbrock 1,684 Posted October 21, 2014 I think it's funny how people act like fans their of their team don't bitch about the refs if a blown call costs them a game and don't defend their team when they win with some help from the refs. Not to mention players that actually play for the fucking teams. Only Seahawks fans and their players do lol. Come on. Every team that has ever won a Super Bowl has had a little luck on their side. Get the fuck over it. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sarge+ 3,436 Posted October 21, 2014 Remember that the next time you hate on Joe Flacco, sean. lol. Just sayin'. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
theMileHighGuy 656 Posted October 21, 2014 If the Seattle defense didn't get away with every other call on the field, I might feel sorry for him 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Attyla the Hawk 197 Posted October 21, 2014 It's really a loser's lament. The local talk radio/fan forums are just rife with people bitching about calls. And generally it's a "We got 9 penalties to their 3" kind of deal. But they don't look at the inordinate number of dumb pre snap penalties we commit. Honestly, I would be shocked if we are averaging less than 5 a game. Which is just ungodly undisciplined. Actually looking it up, we just over 4 per game. Additionally, while most Hawks fans won't admit to it -- Seattle is otherwise a very well coached team. The rules of emphasis this year designed to curtail our defense has had the desired effect. Not in the number of penalties Seattle commits. The Seahawks are amongst the league's best in terms of fewest contact/holding/PI calls. But the style of play has definitely been altered. Seattle has adapted well to the letter of the rules. But they are finding it more difficult to get a grip on where the new line is. Seattle is a team that lives on the edge of clean. That's a hallmark of Carroll's teams. They understand the rules and play aggressively to their limits. This isn't a bad thing. But it also means that as a team we're going to get calls on us because it's natural to cross that line when you are playing so close with fire. Seattle isn't living on that edge right now defensively in the secondary. And it doesn't help that our secondary has lost 5 players since the end of last season (Browner, Thurmond, Maxwell, Simon, Lane). We're playing a mid season trade corner (Burley) who was going to be a roster cut for Indy. Ultimately Seattle fans should stuff a sock in it. The entire disparity of calls on Seattle versus our opponents is entirely with dumb presnap penalties. Through 6 games: Seattle: 51 penalties Opponents: 29 penalties Seattle has almost as many presnap penalties as our opponents' total (25). If we remove presnap/lack of focus/Okung is a re tard penalties, there is virtually no discrepancy at all Seattle: 26 penalties Opponents: 24 penalties Seattle isn't getting hosed. They are just playing dumb. There is nobody to blame but themselves. And the lack of commitment to the run goes hand in hand with getting drives stalled by a preventable 3rd and long situations. Last year we had 52 presnap penalties to our opponent's 40. The real issue has been the explosion of preventable/we are just unfocused offenses. Nobody to blame but ourselves. We aren't playing a bunch of rookies. These are veterans making bad plays. This is on the players. Not coaches. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seanbrock 1,684 Posted October 21, 2014 The same people who give BWare shit for bitching about the refs are the same ones who wine like babies about every Seahawks game. People act like Seattle wouldn't be anywhere without the refs. Anyone watch the Super Bowl last year? Wanna tell me they weren't the best team in the league last year? As for Joe Flacco, he's playing the best football probably of his entire life this year by the numbers so I have to give him credit for that. I might have to admit I was wrong about him by the end of the year if he keeps it up or at least that he's made big improvements in his game (which I've done before as I've been wrong about a lot over the years), but the notion that I hate the Ravens is pretty ridiculous. I always liked the Ravens when they had that dominant defense for years. They were always a physical, defensive minded team and I was loving it when they beat 5head in the divisional round that year and as an Eagles fan I've always had a soft spot for the team that handed the Giants one of the most one sided beat downs in Super Bowl history. Just thought Flacco was starting to get really overrated. Still think the 9ers should have beat them in the Super Bowl that year but they came out and utterly shit themselves in the first half but they didn't and lost. As for Earl Thomas being pissed, I would say it's pretty natural. Is he right? No, but people either forget what it was like to be an athlete and a part of a team or never played football or any other team sport. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BC 331 Posted October 22, 2014 (edited) Anytime you have a controversial call on the last play of a one-score game, you are going to see an outcry of criticism from someone. Was Earl out of line? Yes he was, and he took it a little bit too far. However, similarly to the New England at Carolina Monday Night Football controversial end where the refs picked up a pass interference flag in the back of the end zone and ran for dear life off the field without giving an explanation, many of our players were understandably upset that this play wasn't explained or reviewed. It felt as though the officials rushed this decision due to the fact that there is no real way to know who actually recovers a fumble at the bottom of a scrum. This has been a recurring theme in the NFL this year, making scrums on loose ball plays completely irrelevant. Instead letting the scrum play out leading to the end result, officials have resorted to taking a fraction of the evidence on the play, looking mainly at who initially begins to control the loose ball. The Rams player who first recovered the loose ball fell on the ground and without being touched, or in other words being made "down by contact," he lost the ball, which ended up under the body of Richard Sherman, whom then disappears completely at the bottom of the scrum. We did not play well enough to win this game period, nor did we in any three of our losses this year. We are losing plenty of one-on-one battles, especially in blocking and pass rushing situations that have attributed to our underachieving so far in this young season. The officials had nothing to do with this part of it. Every team, every player, in every sport feels as though they are short-changed by officials. In most cases, they also do not accredit the officials if and when they are given an advantage. They shouldn't either. There's no place in competition to say "we were given something we didn't deserve." In any case where humans are placed as judges, it's basically a lose-lose situation. Human beings aren't capable of accurately decided peoples fate on a consistent basis. It's a broken system and will pretty much always be, and will always receive criticism. We just hope things work out as accurately as possible. It is what it is, and all we can really do is continue to question and vouch for change in positive ways that help make the games better. Edited October 22, 2014 by BC 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BLUE 1,026 Posted October 22, 2014 I wonder if Sean would be singing a different tune if this thread was in the NFC East section and titled "Dez Bryant: Refs need to stay out of it and let us dominate" or "Tony Romo: Refs need to stay out of it and let us dominate" ... 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Attyla the Hawk 197 Posted October 22, 2014 I think it's funny how people act like fans their of their team don't bitch about the refs if a blown call costs them a game and don't defend their team when they win with some help from the refs. Not to mention players that actually play for the fucking teams. Only Seahawks fans and their players do lol. Come on. Every team that has ever won a Super Bowl has had a little luck on their side. Get the fuck over it. Actually, I have a theory on this. Based on two separate circumstances: 1. Seattle is an odd place. On the whole, the social atmosphere around here is a very passive aggressive one. If we don't like something. We don't actually DO anything about it. We just give dirty looks and bitch and moan about it. And pass off that vitriol to our offspring so they can keep the smoldering hatred alive in perpetuity. (ok we'd never say Hate -- that's too strong. Maybe ever so slight disdain). It's also deeply rooted in parochial paranoia. Seattlites who have been here most/all of their lives are generically distrustful of anyone not from here. This has been a hallmark of the local landscape since the 70s. Manifest in the voice and tenor of the local Op/Ed pages -- to even a widely read pair of local columnists who made their reputations on assigning the ills of the populace on California immigrants (literally termed as if they were from another country). Literally we preferred Canadians to anyone south of Portland OR. Seattle as a city has a deeply rooted and overdeveloped sense of 'Us versus the United States'. Even my Grandfather used to tell me in the 30s and 40s that locally we were known as the '47 States and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Washington'. So Seattle is only too eager to whine incessantly about getting a hose job from the rest of America. It's in the DNA. 2. Super Bowl XL. Talk about confirmation bias. Mike Holmgren pretty much put a face on the whining over officiating for all time. While he certainly played to the crowd -- Seattle is going to be forever burdened with his visage and remarks. Well of course we don't consider it a burden. More like Gospel. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seanbrock 1,684 Posted October 22, 2014 I wonder if Sean would be singing a different tune if this thread was in the NFC East section and titled "Dez Bryant: Refs need to stay out of it and let us dominate" or "Tony Romo: Refs need to stay out of it and let us dominate" ... This comparison is invalid. Dez Bryant and the Cowboys are evil and must be destroyed at any and all costs. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bay 2,003 Posted October 22, 2014 It's nothing like Bware's constant bitching. Stahp. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
