Championship liveblog: 49ers at Seahawks

12 thoughts on “Championship liveblog: 49ers at Seahawks”

1. Will the league take action on the person on street clothes who hit the gunner who got run out of bounds? It looked like a punch. That, combined with the Seattle tackler pulling off the punt receiver’s helmet and you have the makings for a really bad situation.

2. :20 seconds left in half. LJ missed Seattle ineligible man down field. Two Seahawks players on right side of line (bottom of screen) went down field on forward pass. The interior man was covered up! LJ missed that and then threw a PF penalty!

3. The commercial break during the last play of the 2 minute warning reminded me of a game a couple of years ago I listened to on the radio. The home team ran the opening kickoff back for a TD. No flags were thrown but they were calling the play off. After a bit of confusion the announcers on the radio stated that TV wasn’t ready and therefore the play was called off.

   Are there actual ruled governing that?

4. Why no commentary on the blown fumble recovery? This may have been the game. Pitiful call.

5. Clear error on running into the kicker call. Should have been roughing the kicker and 49er first down. Led to 7 points by Seattle, which won by 6….

   Doubtful that 49er rusher was in the neutral zone at the time the ball was snapped on Wilson’s touchdown throw to Kearse. Wilson would likely not have thrown that pass had the erroneous neutral zone infraction call not been made….

6. Now, after the worst job of officiating since the Seahawks-Steelers (Bill Levy’s crew) game, the Steratore crew has made a joke of the officiating in the NFL. As if the officiating wasn’t already under a microscope after the NFL has had to apologize for terrible mistakes during the regular season, the Steratore crew upped the ante.

   Watching the Denver-New England game, the officials did not insert themselves into the outcome. A crew that let the two teams play became basically invisible (which is what you want in an NFL game, especially a championship game) and the two teams were allowed to match wits and talent and effort and there was no doubt that, on this day, Denver was the better team.

   Then came the afternoon with the NFC game…I saw terrible officiating that made me wonder if the same kind of scandal that plagued the NBA a few years back might not be on the horizon? Bad calls, wrong calls, calls that won the game for Seattle. One official moving the ball forward to the first down line after Steratore signaled first down when the runner was clearly short of the line to gain. The call for “running into” rather than the “roughing” that the rules require was unforgivable! I felt so bad for Novorro Bowman, who was clearly in possession of a fumbled football and down by contact that possibly ruined his knee when the stripers gave the Seahawks the ball. But perhaps Karma caused the Beast Mode fumble that happened on the next play and gave the ball to the 49’ers?

   Rather than go on and complain about more terrible calls, I will simply say that the NFL got the team they deserved from the NFC and that team was epitomized by that Richard Sherman irrational, arrogant, gangsta rave he screamed out to the world in answer to poor Erin Andrew’s question. She looked like a two-hundred pound pile of poop had been plopped down in front of her and her befuddlement at the magnificence if the self-aggrandization and idiocy of Sherman was obvious. Erin Andrews has had her share of undeserved and unsavory attention in the past so it really is a shame she wound up stuck with Richard Sherman after the game. So now I wonder how the Seahawks will deal with the double dose of distaste and hilarity his comments will cause.

   The Richard Sherman interview will live on in infamy on the internet while it still exists. But so will the shame of the part-time NFL officials…Until a Commissioner who has the cojones to demand that officials be full-tme with offseason traing AND assign at LEAST two additional officials for each crew.

7. Funny how the “worst call in the history of the NFL” from last season’s week 3 Monday night game GB @ Seattle – was trumped many times over by the current crop of clowns working in the stripes, week in week out. From Ichabod Crane who completely blew the roughing the kicker call (and can’t stand still when announcing a foul) , to the clown who blew the alleged helmet to helmet call in the first half (screwing 49ers) when it was an easy to see shoulder to shoulder hit; to the blown fumble call again screwing the 49ers to the non existent hit OOB at the end of the half (which may have cost the 49ers a shot at a field goal as the half expired) to the reversed TD call which the wing clearly did not see, hence the very delayed call – WTF was he thinking? “I see it on the ground in the EZ let me guess at it????” All Star clown crew of the league’s best clowns is what we saw today. What a joke. Until the nepotism and cronyism ends – where else do you have sons and brothers getting pulled up year after year in such an isolated profession? You telling me three members of the same family just “happen” to be the top at this very exclusive profession? Repeated with several other families and believe me there are more related clowns in the pipeline? Until the cronyism and nepotism ends, these officials will continue to be the laughingstock of professional sports officials. Today was a disgrace and an embarassment to whoever has worn the stripes. The owners should have held out and re-staffed the entire office with half the excellent replacements from last year, and the best from the college ranks. Clearly, they would have done a much better job than the current crop of clowns. What a joke. I’m sure the 49ers are laughing all about it, as are the Steelers who were screwed out of a playoff berth a month ago because another clown missed the illegal formation on the last second field goal attempt (and also blew the forward progress call on the fake punt which also would have let the Steelers in).

8. When Kapernick fumbled the ball he clearly kicked away from his own goal line to another 49er who recovered. Is that not a penalty?

9. On the personal foul at :20 of the second quarter, it looked to me like the push occurred before the play was over, and Seattle should have retained possession.

10. I thought the 49er/Hawk game officials did a hell of a job. The guy who is attempting to compare the GB Seattle game last year with this game is nuts, plain nuts. The rule says the Bowman fumble is not reviewable. End of story. It will be changed too late for SF but tough. And more ridiculous is that the 9ers got the ball back on the next play. And didn’t do anything with it. Why place the blame squarely on the guy fumbling and throwing the ball to the other team. 3 turnovers in the last 8 minutes. Sloppy, terrible play in the last quarter. They didn’t get the job done, simple and blaming the refs is ludicrous. Cry baby.

11. So, when you go back and look at the COCKY, arrogant, swagger-when-I-walk, long sleeves-pulled-up-my-arms all-season, crooked-smile, hat-waving Gene Steratore walking on to the field LAST season as the ref. for the first game back after the replacements were done, THEN look at the HS-level, missed call on the punter in the NFC game, I think he should have to walk on to a field with his head down, with no smile, and have extra long sleeves pulled over his hands, and APOLOGIZE.
    2013 NFL officiating theme: a LOT worse than the replacements, and yet ZERO MEDIA COVERAGE of the media’s OWN hypocrisy. NO accountability to ethical journalism.

12. Oh, and how does the BJ NOT see the ball in #55’s arm , down by contact (since he lost his knee on the play) a FULL 2 SECONDS before the pile started? Where else could he/should he have been looking??!! he had the most non-obstructed view of any of teh 6 who had a chance to see it.

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