Sherman’s Sneaky Theory Just Might Help the Seahawks Win
Richard Sherman isn’t a man to let Super Bowl hype go to waste. He might even be able to use it to help the Seahawks win the game.
The Seattle cornerback celebrated his arrival in Phoenix last Sunday evening by claiming that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ‘s close relationship with Patriots owner Robert Kraft might influence punishment related to Deflategate.
Sherman dismissed the idea the Patriots would be sanctioned for using inadequately inflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game by saying, “I think he (Goodell) was just at Kraft’s house for the AFC Championship Game. Talk about a conflict of interest. As long as that happens, I don’t think it’ll affect them at all.’’
Sherman subsequently defended the validity of his charge at subsequent Super Bowl press conferences. It’s almost as if he was trying to drive the point home to his audience.
While Sherman’s overall audience of media and football fans was massive, he might have had in mind a niche market of seven men: The NFL officials who will work Super Bowl XLIX. By accusing the Pats of being teacher’s pets, Sherman put everyone, including the refs, on high alert for anything in the big game that favored them.
Whether or not Goodell’s NFL has any bias toward the Partriots, the league’s officials have reasons not to be overly fond of him. Just two years after locking refs out and subjecting everyone to replacement officials, the NFL made life for them far more complex with “points of emphasis’’ regarding collisions between pass receivers and pass defenders in 2014. The officials may have tried their best to follow along, but no one seems to be quite sure what pass interference is anymore.
NFL officials face the difficult task of maintaining the integrity of fair competition in a chaotic and violent sport. With massive audiences watching the Super Bowl each year, they have thrown relatively few penalty flags. It has seemed that no ref wanted to be the guy whose call decided a Super Bowl. They’re still arguing over the pass interference call on the Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII. That was only 36 years ago.
The tradition was interrupted last year. The Seahawks set the all-time Super Bowl record for penalty yardage with 104 yards on 10 calls. This was ignored since Seattle routed the Denver Broncos by five touchdowns, but I’ll bet Sherman remembers.
Rather than simply begging the refs to “let us play our game out there,’’ Seattle’s prime agitator seems to be conveying a subtler message: Use your own judgment guys, not the ones pressed on you by Goodell and his pal in New England.
While Sherman’s charge that Kraft and Goodell are in cahoots might be firmly in tin foil helmet territory, the two have been close. Kraft has been called the “assistant commissioner’’ in print by an anonymous fellow owner due to his influence in league affairs.
Commissioners, however, are supposed to be subtler than cornerbacks. Letting others within the league (I doubt Sherman just made it up himself) get the idea that some franchises are more equal than others is probably the worst blunder of Goodell’s tenure, and that’s setting the bar at world record height. Goodell’s job rests on the good opinion of 32 owners. They tolerate his arbitrary and ineffective administration because it has yet to get in the way of their bank accounts. If one or more of them ever comes to agree with Sherman, Goodell will become the newest member of the ESPN commentating family in about a day.
Sherman’s quote could remind any listening officials that they work at the pleasure an organization widely viewed as corrupt. They are in the position of the decent sheriff in a classic Western movie struggling to maintain order in the shadow of an evil town boss. In the movies, the sheriff takes a stand in the final reel and justice reigns. For defensive players, football justice would mean a return to the traditional Super Bowl laissez faire rules interpretations.
The fewer the flags, the better the Super Bowl for us fans, too. Thanks to Sherman, we might get it.
People forget because they’re middle-aged and not young, but NFL officials are at bottom athletes, gifted athletes with all the emotional baggage that status entails. I assume there’s a bulletin board in the officials’ dressing room at University of Phoenix Stadium. I wonder what’ll be posted on it this week?
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