Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll Rips Officiating After Loss To Dallas Cowboys
The Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys may not have any yellow in their color schemes, but viewers sure saw a lot of it during Thursday night's game.
Throughout the entire game, both teams drew an obscene amount of penalties. Seattle had 10 flags for 130 yards, while Dallas had nine for 127 yards. Some of those penalties were warranted, no doubt, but enough to make this one of the most penalized games of the season? Probably not.
After the game, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was vocal about his displeasure with the sheer number of penalties on both sides.
A referee attempts to break up Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and Seahawks cornerback Tariq Woolen.
© Tim Heitman, USA TODAY
"It's unfortunate that it feels like there was a whole 'nother factor in this game," Carroll said, per ESPN. "I don't know, you guys saw it a lot better than I did, but there was just way too many penalties in this game, for both sides. We've got to get out of that kind of football."
Amidst all the penalties, there was one sequence that particularly bothered Carroll. Late in the first quarter, a delay of game penalty backed Jason Myers' field goal attempt up to a 42-yard try, but the play clock was not properly reset after the flag. Lo and behold, Myers wound up missing the kick as both he and Carroll were clamoring for a reset.
Later on, referee Clete Blakeman shared his recount of that sequence.
"Following a play like that, third down going to fourth down, we have a process as it relates to transitioning the balls in and out, if the kicking team is coming out or not," Blakeman said. "The scrimmage ball is transitioned out and the kicking ball is transitioned in. The umpire spots the ball. I'm dealing with eligibles reporting in and the kicking team in that regard. So, through this process, there was no real delay to either the scrimmage ball going out or the kicking ball coming in. It was just a normal process. Of course, at the end of the down the 40-second clock kicks in. We felt like there wasn't any undue delay in any way. It was a normal procedure."
For Carroll, though, that explanation doesn't fix what he believes is an egregious mistake by the officials, as he said after the game: "The way I saw it, that's an error on their part, and that was too bad."
To cap off his officiating critique, Carroll reiterated that the sheer frequency of penalties doesn't help the league, and he intends to push against it however he can.
"They know the game, they know how to make these calls, but they can't call everything that when there's a little this and a little that, and particularly when it doesn't affect the play," Carroll said. "I'll spend some time on this in the offseason for sure."
