I'll have to agree with this article, sports reporting is pretty over the top at times. However, I am about fed up with the NFL rule book with all of its problems. There needs to be a big over haul of the rules. This has gotten way out of hand. This can be reviewed, this can't, this is a catch this isn't. How is it, if the tip of the ball alone on one play is a TD but on the next on, the receiver didn't hold the ball on his chest and do a ballet move to prove his feet both are in bounds is that not a TD? These rules are over the top I really hate the ball being placed at the location of an alleged pass interference play when the receiver has goaded the defender for 20 yards or running yet the ref magically only sees the defender in this exchange? Especially when the receiver wouldn't have gotten the ball anyway which is why he played the defender to begin with, so we reward the receiver for underhanded crap on an under / over thrown ball? Just because he threw his hands in the air looking for the flag? Defenders can't do anything to actually defend the play in many circumstances. I can't help but wonder if the excessive rules are not part of the reason that the number of nasty injuries are so high this season. Players contorting themselves to avoid all the penalties???
There are two competing storylines from Seattle's ugly 13-10 win over Detroit on Monday night: (1) Kam Chancellor saved Seattle's season and (2) the refs gave the Seahawks the game at the end.
The first is preposterous hyperbole, and the second is not true.
To recap: Chancellor knocked the ball out of Calvin Johnson's hand at the goal line in the final two minutes, helping the Seahawks improve to 2-2. Those who hailed Chancellor as the Seahawks' messiah when he returned last week began hollering hallelujahs even louder after the desperate, fortuitous play.
But it's all a lot of emotional hyperbole. Plenty of teams have rallied from 1-3 to make the playoffs, and the 2001 Patriots won the Super Bowl. A 1-3 record is nowhere close to a death knell, so Chancellor is no season savior.
But let's certainly give him his due for saving a game that seemed like it might end up just like the last time these teams played -- in 2012 in Detroit, Matthew Stafford drove the Lions 80 yards for the winning TD with 27 seconds left.
On Monday, Stafford had driven the Lions exactly 80 yards leading into the game-deciding play, and they were looking at taking a 17-13 lead with under two minutes remaining.
But Chancellor said he saw "a lot of brown" under Johnson's arm and punched the ball out -- something Pete Carroll drills into his defenders every day. Carroll and Bobby Wagner both said it was very reminiscent of Earl Thomas' spectacular goal-line punchout against the St. Louis Rams last December.
Wagner said Chancellor's game-saving move reminded everyone "how big time a playmaker he is."
Carroll said, "For a long time around here, we have talked about 'something good is about to happen.' And we saw one of the great plays in ball when a team's on the precipice of winning the football game and a guy makes the play. The play Kam makes is extraordinary."
Afterward, Michael Bennett broke into Chancellor's ESPN interview to yell "Pay him!" -- a reference to Chancellor's two-month holdout, which ended without him getting any concessions from the team.
To finish that play, K.J. Wright chased the ball and knocked it out of the end zone -- a move that should have drawn a penalty and helped the Lions retain possession inside the 1-yard line.
That would have set up a goal-line stand for the Seattle defense with 1:45 left -- and who knows how that would have turned out? The Seahawks have not surrendered a touchdown in two weeks, so it is quite possible they would have held the Lions to the tying field goal.
It also is quite possible that -- if the Lions had taken the lead -- Wilson would have redeemed himself by driving Seattle to the winning touchdown.
So, while the official technically erred in not making the call against Wright (though in spirit he made the correct call), it does not mean the game would have been over if he had given the ball back to Detroit. Anyone who watched the NFC title game last season knows that.
As Carroll said, "We were fortunate (on the non-call). (But) the game wasn't over. We just might have had to keep playing."
But the Seahawks did not have to, instead walking out with another controversial Monday night win (they beat the Packers on the so-called Fail Mary to Golden Tate, now with the Lions, in 2012).
The rest of the football world -- especially the Packers, Lions and random Seahawks haters -- can whine all they like about the tainted wins. But the Seahawks and their fans have no reason to apologize for either of those officiating debacles -- not after all of the major officiating gaffes that have gone against them in the past.
Need we remind you of the Vinny Testaverde touchdown in 1998? Or Super Bowl XL, which referee Bill Leavy apologized for? Or do we need to point out that last year's Seahawks carried the biggest disparity in foul calls in decades? Or that the refs blew a call in Kansas City that -- very much like Monday's game -- should have set the Seahawks up at the Chiefs' 1-yard line?
If anything, the NFL owes the Hawks a few more. So no reason to apologize. And no reason to think the refs gave them the game or Chancellor's great play saved the entire season.
Those make for great storylines, but they are overplayed. Just call it what it is -- an ugly win preserved with a great play -- and forget the hyperbole.
Image: Mike Morris (Flickr)