The Seahawks went down 25-20 in New Orleans on Sunday and among the discrepancies on the stat sheet beyond the score was the difference in penalties called on the two teams.
The Saints were penalized twice for 10 yards while the Seahawks were flagged 11 times for 76 yards to create a margin far greater than the one that existed coming into the game. The two teams were ranked 26th and 27th in the league in penalty yards per game with the Saints averaging over 73 yards a contest and the Seahawks just over 70 yards a week.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll called the difference “pretty far out of whack,” something cornerback Richard Sherman appeared to agree with when he made his own comments about the officials. Sherman focused on the lack of calls for offensive pass interference on pick plays by the New Orleans offense.
“The calls -- or the lack thereof -- were pretty egregious,” Sherman said, via ESPN.com. “It’s hard to play defense like that when you’re in Cover 1, you’re covering your guy, and you get knocked to the ground. We can’t touch the receivers without getting anything called on us, and they can block us 3, 4 yards down the field. So you’ve just got to find a way around it and find a solution, I guess.”
One solution would be to get their offense going in a way that keeps penalties from weighing so heavily in the final equation. The Seahawks ran 18 fewer plays than the Saints on their way to 359 total yards, which was also well below the Saints’ per-game average heading into Sunday, and better results with the ball would do a lot to counteract negative ones with the officials.
