I am very annoyed by the way the media is turning the actual story, an amazing second half of the season and postseason performance by the Pittsburgh Steelers, into a diatribe against the refereeing in the league. I listened to the Jaws, Irvin and TJ say things like, "Every big play by Seattle was negated by a penalty."
But when you get down to it there were four plays people are complaining about. Two of them weren't very important, heck one was a tackle by the QB, no matter what the call he still had thrown a crippling interception. The two scoring plays in question, Big Ben's TD wouldn't be an issue if the official running in from the side wasn't indecisive. But okay, he was, either way Pittsburgh was still on the 0 yard line with 1 more down, they were clearly coming away with points there.
The other D-Jax's push off, was, well a push off. I don't care if you take it down and play it frame by frame, the he made a cut, put his hand up on the defender and then gained separation from the defender. If the hand didn't touch the defenders shoulder then I would agree it was a bad call. But the official does not have the benefit of super slow motion instant replay, he is watching people move very quickly, and when one of them illegally contacts another he throws a flag, it doesn't matter if he only pushed a little, it was illegal and a good call.
And even worse than the national media saying this, is the losing head coach making comments about the officials in a public forum. Holmgren, I don't care if you claim the ball was underinflated, or that the sun was in your eyes or that the ground was soggier on your side of the field. You guys lost, and the biggest reason was that the Seattle gameplan was a clunker. Consistently not running the ball in critical situations, and choosing to throw the ball 20+ yards on every 3rd down was the problem. Plus the biggest problem you had, Pittsburgh was better.