Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was upset about the total number of penalties during Thursday night’s loss to the Cowboys and he was particularly rankled by one call.
The Seahawks were flagged for delay of game before a Jason Myers field goal attempt in the first quarter and Myers wound up missing from 42 yards. Carroll could be seen yelling at officials from the sideline and said after the game that the officials erred by not restarting the play clock after spotting the ball, but referee Clete Blakeman told pool reporter Brady Henderson of ESPN.com that the operation was correct.
Blakeman said the ball was not re-spotted, but that officials had to spot the kicking ball that gets swapped in ahead of field goal attempts.
“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.”
Carroll also said that he “screwed up” by not signaling a timeout earlier in the sequence.
“On that particular play, nobody on our crew indicated that Pete was attempting to call a timeout at all,” Blakeman said.
The Seahawks could have used the points in that spot, but they still led the game in the second half before the Cowboys came back to win the game.