In Slate,
Bernie Weintraub agrees with me that the refs stole the game from the Seahawks. He mentions one penalty that I'd forgotten about: the pathetically bad "block below the waist" call on Matt Hasselbeck as he was trying to tackle the guy who intercepted him. I was screaming at the television on that one...
I think this is why the game yesterday had such a herky-jerky rhythm: Every time the Seahawks tried to get into a groove, the refs found some phantom penalty with which to drain their momentum.
Judging from the coverage of the past two weeks, the league and ABC decided that Pittsburgh was the story to promote. (Did you know that Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?) One can only surmise that the refs got the message....
