Seahawks coach Pete Carroll had plenty to say after Thursday night’s loss to the Cowboys regarding the number of penalties called in the game. On Friday, Carroll backpedaled a bit.
“There were 19 penalties called in the game,” Carroll told reporters on Friday. “What I’m not going to do, is I’m not going to go bellyache about the calls and the penalties. I’m not doing that. It was just that was the night, and we had to compete with the factors as it was. They did too. It was unfortunate, they were such a big factor in the game. I don’t think it needed to be, but it was, so that’s the way this game went. There were plays that were taken away and plays that were given because of the calls, and that’s just what happens sometimes. There was just way too much involvement. I just wish it wasn’t like that because I like to see the players play it out, figure it out, finish the game, and see what happens.”
The counter is this — penalties are called when the rules are violated. If a team doesn’t want penalties to be called, it shouldn’t violate the rules.
A decade ago, the Seahawks brazenly violated the rules regarding illegal contact against receivers, daring the officials to bog down the game by calling fouls over and over again. The prompted the NFL to make fouls against receivers a point of emphasis as of 2014, the season after the Legion of Boom won a Super Bowl for Seattle.
In today’s NFL, which is premised on maximizing scoring, teams can’t desensitize officials against illegal contact and/or pass interference by repeatedly committing such fouls and hoping a flag won’t be thrown on every play. And if coaches like Carroll don’t like it, they need to coach their players not to constantly grab, tug, and pull receivers who are trying to get open in the hopes that only a small percentages of such infractions will ever be called.
