Watch the replay. Brock is very clearly leg-whipped by the right tackle, which is a personal foul. As a result of this illegal leg whip, he loses his balance and stumbles forward into the legs of the QB.

It’s that simple.

When Brock is not fined later this week, that will be the reason why.

At least the Steelers finally had Leavy call a penalty against them….late in the third quarter, when it was a three-score game, and it was completely impossible to ignore the clipping call that took place directly in front of him.

Leavy lists his hometown at Pittsburgh…is anyone really surprised?

Probably coincidence.

Like PigPen getting charged with rape over and over and over…

*****************************
Deb says:
Sep 16, 2011 4:19 PM
Thought you were talking about the 70s when they were commonly used throughout the league. If you’re talking about now–careful what you wish for. I expect every team will take a hit when they start testing. Realists don’t get shamed.

Testing will prove who is right and who is shamed on that subject.

POINT BEING— just because the Steelers are on the 1 or 2 does not mean you get an auto TD.

*MIC DROP*

“there’s no way Roethlisberger could have cheated by putting the ball over the goal line after the fact since the officials watched the whole sequence on replay. ”

I watched that game too and I saw the replay and there was nothing that conclusively showed the ball breaking the plane. Even the commentators questioned that and were subsequently shocked when they called it a TD. You can’t say he would have scored there anyway if they spotted the ball back a few. Goal line defenses often produce stops. The most they could have or would have gotten was likely a field goal assuming it wasn’t blocked by the D. But like I said there is no way to know how the game would have gone or could have gone because the refs blew it. But thanks anyway for your biased steeler fan dribble.

We’re miscommunicating. You didn’t do anything wrong by calling me “buddy.” I figured you didn’t notice my handle, and was just saying “Oh, by the way, I’m a girl.” Kind of a regular around here … and generally a pretty good sport. Have been giving the Ravens fans props all week

Yes, O’Donnell was our starter. Our starting receiver was out. The backup ran the wrong route, which is how Larry Brown was able to swoop in and make the INT that put the game away. So that’s comparable to Manuel’s replacement blowing the coverage.

I think you’re doing what a lot of people do in these circumstances. You’re taking a badly officiated game–no argument there. And you’re attaching other unrelated events to it (the Bettis hometown stuff, the lopsided amount of Steelers merchandise) so it plays with your head. And yes, I did exactly that same thing in that moment with Polamalu in the Colts game. I thought, “They’re trying to throw the game for Dungy because his son just died!” which is just about the dumbest thing that’s ever raced through my head. But if we’d lost that game, it would have continued to eat at me. The truth is that the ref simply didn’t know the rule. And that’s the scary truth in a lot of these situations. Officiating in the NFL is a mess, and for all his preening about the integrity of the game, Goodell does nothing to address it.

Steelers have a lot of haters, as do the Cowboys and Pats. And the media blew a few calls out of proportion. Going back over the game, it wasn’t much worse than a lot of other games, but it soon took on a kind of urban legend status. I honestly believe we’d have won. And it breaks my heart because I just want to enjoy the win without all the drama. No, I can’t blame Seahawks fans. I wish it had been a clean game so both teams could have peace. But try to silence those voices talking about conspiracies. I really do believe it was just plain incompetence. Maybe it will help believing people were just stupid and not out to get you.

Also still not quite getting the O’Donnell comparison. Was he not a starter prior to Superbowl XXX? B ecause I know Etrict Pruitt (backup for Seattle in Superbowl XL) was not. So, again, don’t see any similarities to compare between the two scenarios.

While there are some that say Leavy threw the game, I don’t necessarily think that was the case, but as I mentioned before, something was awry. Do I think there was some grandiose conspiracy? Not necessarily. Do I think that it was in the NFL’s best interest to have the Pittsburgh Steelers win Superbowl XL? Absolutely. Does that mean that I think they skewed the officiating to favor Pittsburgh? While the logical side of my mind says no as I would hope the NFL would not do something like that to their fans, my gut tells me otherwise based on what I saw the entire week in Detroit as well as how the game went. Too many factors that stood out to just ignore as coincidence.

If that’s something that sounds ludicrous to some, that is their opinion. But I’m sure if you asked Raider fans about the 2001 Divisional playoffs in Foxboro, or Sacramento Kings fans about the 2000 Western Conference Finals, or Baltimore Orioles fans about Game 1 of the 1996 American League Championship Series, many of them likely would feel the same way.

I’m just curious…how do you think Steeler Nation would have acted had the Colts pulled out the 2006 Divisional playoff against the Steelers? My guess is they would have been right in line with Joey Porter claiming the NFL wanted Peyton Manning to win the game.

I recall on my trip back from Detroit the Monday after Superbowl XL, standing in line at one of the food court restaurants in O’Hare airport (Chicago) and having the cashier see my hat and state “Dude…you guys were f*&%$ing robbed man.” And the Steeler fan standing nearby said “ah…you think?” And the cashier proceeded to argue with him. Thought it was quite funny.

I don’t expect an uninterrupted pity party. But if people want to comment on something, then don’t be surprised if people from Seattle still have a bone to pick and do away with the “stop complaining” posts. What do you guys think is gonna happen when the same SOB ref that admittedly cost us an opportunity to win a Superbowl gets assigned to another game where we are going head-to-head against Pittsburgh. I mean seriously…

What hurt them and eventually led to the two single “big plays” by the Steelers was the injury to starting safety Marquand Manuel, which led to having to bring in a kid that was signed off the street just a month earlier.

And I responded that O’Donnell’s big turnovers in SBXXX resulted from one of our starters being injured. I was simply pointing out that the same thing had happened to us. It happens to everyone–it’s part of the game.

Quite a number of people on this thread are saying Leavy “threw” the game, and when you talk about how suspicious it was that stores carried mostly Steelers merchandise and how the NBA has been fixing games for years, you do sound like the tinfoil crowd. I’ve seen many games in which no flags were thrown for long segments of play–and I’m sure you have as well. Again, are you saying it was a fix or not?

This was an article about two teams, not one. If you want an uninterrupted pity party, you’ll have to throw it on a one-team blog. It won’t happen here.

On the Neil O’Donnell subject, please stop bringing it up because there’s no comparison. The Steelers made it to the Superbowl with O’Donnell and lost with him, therefore, don’t try to cry that “we didn’t have our starting QB”. That’s typical of Steeler fans. Your QB sucked in the game, which is why you lost. There’s a huge difference between going with a guy for a majority of the season and throughout the playoffs than there is with having to throw in a guy signed off the street a month earlier who had no previous experience. How’s that for an analysis. As I recall, O’Donnell pretty much stunk up the joint in the AFC Championship as well in a game at home (could have lost on Harbaugh’s Hail Mary). Pittsburgh made it to Superbowl XXX in spite of O’Donnell, not because your starting QB got knocked out of the game by Dallas, so don’t get it twisted.

For you (and other Steeler fans) to claim there were all these bad calls against Pittsburgh, I’d love for you just to name a few. I’m guessing all you’ll have to go on is “there was a block in the back on the INT by Ben that Seattle returned all the way back to inside their 20″.

And who is saying that Leavy “threw” any calls. He, by his own admission, said he missed two calls in the 4th quarter of the game that likely had an impact on the outcome. Then moves on to state he lost sleep over the calls and this and that. Sounds like a pretty big admission of guilt. On the biggest stage, the guy and his crew crapped the bed. Yeah, humans make mistakes, but not over and over and over again repeatedly in a 60 minutes frame of time. I challenge you to provide an example of a game of this magnitude that was officiated THIS poorly in any major U.S. sport.

Again…no one said anything about “everyone agrees with me”. I stated a fact. Many whether in the mainstream media or not considered the game to be a sham. Why don’t you do a little research “sport” and go watch NFL film’s segment on the game itself, where the NFL itself mocks the skewed officiating. I’m sure they did that just for the satisfaction of Seattle fans didn’t they?

Best line of the segment. “Over the last 35 minutes of the contest, the Pittsburgh Steelers were not flagged for a single penalty.”

As for the Pity Party…call it what you want, but it’s quite funny that Steeler fans always find the need to “interrupt” our Pity Parties with their opinions, analysis and general arrogance. If it annoys you so much, then choose not to comment and let us all whine amongst one another.

I’m not a buddy, sport. I’m female, like the name “Deb” suggests. I’m not making excuses, but simply stating facts you don’t want to hear. That’s why you’re getting all pissy. And I’m not surprised you’d dismiss the info that plays went awry in SBXXX because our starter was injured–just as you claim happened to you in SBXL. It’s easier to say “O’Donnell sucked” and go back to your familiar whining than to analyze a game–or grasp that other teams suffer losses and get bad calls.

I’ve never denied the officiating was bad in SBXL. My outrage is that the league has done nothing to improve officiating in the six years since, and it’s continued to deteriorate. Yes, bad calls went against Seattle and against Pittsburgh. But trying to claim all those retailers plus the officiating crew plus the media plus the league were tied up together in a conspiracy to crown Pittsburgh is idiotic. Conspiracies don’t work that way. The more people who are in on a secret, the less likely it is to remain secret.

Leavy didn’t say he deliberately threw two calls. It is against the law to throw a major sporting event. If Leavy had admitted to fixing a Super Bowl, there would have been a federal investigation. Way to exaggerate. He said he felt he blew two calls. I’ve heard former ref Jim Tunney, Ed Hochuli, and others admit the same thing after other games. Refs are human and humans make mistakes. That’s not conspiratorial.

Pittsburgh has a huge fan base. It’s also one of the most disliked franchises in the league. The same is true for the Cowboys and Patriots. So any scandal involving those teams, and yes fans of all the others pile on. History books record the majority also thought the world was flat. That didn’t make it so. “Everyone agrees with me!” is a lame argument.

If you care to do the research, objective sports analysts have evaluated that game play by play and concluded the Steelers would have won the game. But don’t let me interrupt your pity party.

I agree that Seattle’s fanbase is miniscule compared to Pittsburgh’s, which exactly plays to my point. The NFL had ALOT to lose should Seattle have won that game. Lots more Steelers “Superbowl Champs”, “One for the thumb” merchandise to be sold than for a handful of stuff to be bought up here in the Pacific Northwest (aka south Alaska).

I could maybe see your point if the majority of the opinion out there had the same outlook on the game, but when you have the overwhelming majority state that the game was not only officiated poorly, but skewed to favor one team, that should tell you something.

And let’s not forget Bill Leavy’s lame attempt at an apology/admittance last August that he booted two calls in the fourth that had an impact on the outcome of the game.

As I said before, I was just as upset as a fan of the NFL and not just one of the Seahawks. The NBA has been employing these same tactics for years, which is why many fans stopped caring about it in the late 90′s.

So you can sit here and give me a bunch of excuses about how Seahawks fans don’t wanna hear this or hear that…fact is, there’s more out there that saw the same outcome as we did compared to those of Steeler nation.

chikiboy and SavannahRose44 don’t want to hear about the bad calls that went against the Steelers that day. They don’t want to go back and watch the game again–objectively–and examine all the calls. Nor do they want to read breakdowns of the game by sports analysts with no axes to grind.

SavannahRose44 doesn’t want to see there’s no way Roethlisberger could have cheated by putting the ball over the goal line after the fact since the officials watched the whole sequence on replay. Still photos show the ball breaking the plane in the air–and that’s what the officials were judging. Personally, I wish they’d called it a few inches short because our 6’5″ 240 lb QB was perfect on QB sneaks at that distance, and we wouldn’t have to suffer inane comments about cheating in a circumstance where cheating wasn’t possible.

chikiboy doesn’t want to hear that merchandisers stock stores based on what they expect to sell, not based on being fair to game participants. Seattle isn’t in the ballpark to the international fanbase the Steelers have, so they weren’t expected to have similar audience representation at that game. It was a conspiracy of wanting to make money on their wares.

chikiboy doesn’t want to hear how Neil O’Donnell threw those infamous interceptions to SBXXX hero Larry Brown in part because our starter was injured and his backup ran the wrong route. Seattle isn’t the only team to get a bad break in the Super Bowl. None of them want to hear that Dallas scored a touchdown when Jay Novacek threw an illegal pick, taking out the defender–a pick the refs didn’t bother to call. They don’t want to hear how everything about that game was a coronation of Dallas and no one expected Pittsburgh to even be able to compete. It was very similar to what chikiboy’s describing in Detroit–without the whining and conspiracy theories on our part.

Our game with Dallas had a slightly closer score than the one with Seattle, yet we haven’t spent the last 25 years screeching that “We was robbed!” largely because that game was played before the era of 24-hour sports channels and blogs. Conspiracies–whether about 9/11, Spygate, or SBXL–have become the national pastime for the simpleminded and those who’d rather believe BIG convoluted theories than the simple truth that sometimes humans screw up.

Steelers fans will continue to say “get over it” and “we’ve won another one since”, but that doesn’t change anything…at least in my eyes. I can’t imagine what we all would have had to listen to if they would have lost to the Colts that year in the Divisional round following the “bad call” on the Polamalu INT.

I respect the franchise and think the Rooney family is a model example of good ownership. I’ve been to a couple of games at Hines Field and think it’s one of the greatest football venues out there. If I had to choose one coach I would want to play for in the NFL it would be Mike Tomlin and for my money, Dick Labeau (along with Rex Ryan) is the best defensive mind in the NFL. That being said, the Steelers got over on the Seahawks and the other NFL fans that day and I think most outside of the greater Pennsylvania area understand that.

The Seahawks didn’t play lights out (specifically Jerramy Stevens), but the defense played great (as they did throughout the playoffs…go look at the QB ratings for each of their playoff opponents). What hurt them and eventually led to the two single “big plays” by the Steelers was the injury to starting safety Marquand Manuel, which led to having to bring in a kid that was signed off the street just a month earlier. Watch who was caught out of position on both of those plays and you’d see.

The people that claim that “a good team overcomes bad calls” must have not ever played the game of football at a high level or just don’t understand the sport. It’s a game about momentum and emotion. When you have any positive play negated by a penalty, it takes that aspect away from you. Many make it out like there were two or three bad calls in this game, when the reality is, the entire game was littered with them.

It still amazes me all of the calls that people seem to conveniently forget that occurred in this game.

What about Peter Warrick’s 50 yard + punt return that was called back due to a phantom hold (which Tom Jackson made a joke about during NFL Primetime following the game).

Or the multiple illegal lineman down field on Rothlisberger’s long completion in the first half.

Or the multiple Steelers players blatantly offside on the infamous Sean Locklear holding play (which half of the Seahawks starting offensive line claimed that is what they initially thought the flag was for).

Or the no-call on Hines Ward for chucking Kelly Herndon by the head to get himself open on a 10 yard out to complete a third and long (which was laughable considering this occurred AFTER the Darell Jackson pass interference call that negated a TD).

And still, after several other “questionable” calls, to this point, following the completion to Stevens down to the 1 yard line (if they play stands in light of the questionable hold), Seattle likely would have punched the ball in from the one yard line (behind the NFL MVP and what was considered at that time, the best offensive line in football) capping off a 90+ yard drive in the 4th quarter of the Superbowl against the vaunted Steelers defense to take the lead.

Personally, my favorite “questionable” play, being at the game live, was following the Hasselbeck INT and “illegal block”, seeing Rothlisberger go to the line of scrimmage with under 10 seconds on the playclock and begin barking out audibles while the clock ticked down. From my vantage point (corner of the endzone), I could clearly see the playclock behind him tick to zero before standing up and screaming “Look at the F*&%ing playclock”! The Steeler fans in my section got a good kick out of that one. Too bad Leavy and his crew didn’t happen to notice before granting Rothlisberger the timeout he attempted to call while the clock sat at zero.

Being in Detroit that whole week, it was nothing but a seven day appreciation of the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise. Very little Seahawks merchandise could be found anywhere.

While I’m not gonna say that the game was “fixed” or that there was some conspiracy, I will say that being there, in person, something wasn’t right, from the way I heard the game was broadcast, to the discrepancy in merchandise, leading all the way down to the way the game was officiated.

I love the NFL and always will, but I’ll never look at it the same as I did before that day. Am I still bitter? F*&%$ yeah I’m still bitter. As far as I’m concerned, the NFL owes me a free trip to a Superbowl that I can enjoy…not just as a Seahawks fan, but as an NFL fan. From the bottom of my heart, if we would have been blown out 42-0, I still would have enjoyed myself much more than I did considering what went down.

Even my husband a avid 49er fan recognized that SB officiating was bogus. Call Seattle fans bitter all you want but the fact is there were game changing calls that were admittedly blown by this ref in particular. In what world does a QB go down at the 1 yard line pull the ball out from underneath his body and place it over the goal line while he is on the ground and have it ruled a TD? Oh wait I forgot in the world of BS officiating and Ben Rothlisberger straight up cheating.

I’m not going to go so far as to say Seattle would have won, because the simple fact is blown calls change outcomes, but it should have been a lot closer game than it was. Had that game been called fair the outcome might have been different but we will never know now. So forgive us for not taking that loss at face value, but even my personal friends who happen to be Steeler fans admitted the refs helped them win that game. Let’s hope this ref at least has learned from his mistakes and will take more care in the future to make the right call.

Ask the Saints.

GO STEELERS!

50 years and your team has … “dust”
but nice try. Have fun watching McNabb light up the league with his 39 passing yards per game.