[quote name='BigT']This game was not the finest moment for NFL officiating:
1.) At the end, Kurt Warner's elbow was going forward and he was able to propel the ball forward with good velocity... that's a forward pass! If Brady or Manning throw that, it would not have been called a fumble (it was a big play, since the 15 yd penalty on the Steelers would have given the Cardinals a shot from the 29 yard line... With Boldin, Fitzgerald, and Breaston on the field, they would have a reasonable chance to score...)
2.) Santonio Holmes' celebration: I think that the anti-celebration rule is
stupid, but that gets called as a 15 yd penalty all the time... the refs should be consistent.
3.) Running into the holder? Who the hell ever calls that... I've never seen that in 20 years of watching football...
4.) Hightower gets blatantly blocked in the back on the Harrison TD return. Last I checked, that was clipping...
5.) Why was Harrison not thrown out of the game. I thought that throwing a punch should be an automatic DQ
The Cardinals (a finesse team) sets the record for penalty yards in a SB game. The Steelers, a much more hard nosed team only gets flagged for half as many yards.
Remember when the Seahawks got jobbed a few years ago... the NFL really likes the Steelers (I conversely hate the franchise with a passion almost equal to my hatred for the Patriots... Pasadena 1980 and New Orleans 2002 will not be forgotten)[/quote]
#1 - The Ball was out of his hand before his arm move forward. The reason the ball moved forward was because his arm hit the ball.. It was a good call.
#2 - TO didn't get penalized for using the football as a prop for the spygate td celebration. At least I think not. Seems nitpicky to me considering.
#3 - The holder is the extension of the kicker. The holder can't block and is just as vulnerable as the kicker. I haven't seen it either but I haven't seen some one run into a placeholder.
#4 - How about Larry Fitzgerald engaging in the tackle from out of bounds. He jumped on Harrison from the out of bounds. That is also a penalty, I believe.
#5 - I don't know the rule. I don't know if he didn't hit him a certain way that wasn't considered a punch.
Seriously the Cards didn't get jobbed, neither did the Seahawks.. I wish people would quit saying stupid shit like that.. you don't throw that int to Harrison, you would have won.. did the Pats get jobbed last year? I heard a lot of bitching last year too. There will always be calls we all don't agree with. While you see calls going against the Cards, I see calls going against the Steelers. In the end it came down to the int.