First off, not all the judgement calls went against the Seahawks, or the game would have been decided with the Hasselbeck fumble that was overturned after review.
That fumble reversal didn't seem like much a "judgement call." The only part of that sequence that was a judgement was the referee's intial error. You could see that he'd been touched before ground caused the fumble after watching he replay once in full-speed playback.
Judgement calls initially are ALWAYS made on the field of play by the refs down in the game itself. It is the review process that clears up the misconceptions made at fast speed during the game, or at least the ones that CAN be reviewed. Not all are reviewable.
I think the calls that were reviewable were all made correctly according to the rules. The goal line thing was iffy, but too close to say one way or the other. The holding call was weak, WEAK, WEAK!, plain and simple. The push-off in the endzone was hardly better, too. The Seahawks still had a chance after the holding call. Blame Hasslenuts for floating a duck out there, not the refs.Â
The goal line call was not that iffy. One of the things the referee has to look at during any booth review, is where the ball placement should go. Once they saw that the ball cleared the end zone line, which it did, placement would have put the nose of the ball just over the line. That makes it a touchdown, so it was called a touchdown.
Holding calls are always judgement calls and cannot be reviewed, except by skeptical fans and coaches who have no say in them. The timing of that particular one is where an arguement can be made that at least the line judge may have been impaired by an inflated wallet.
As for the push-off in the end zone, as a Raider fan, I have no sympathy except some satisfaction that on the grandest stage of all, this questionable judgement call is at last being scrutinized. Last season, where the Raiders crawled to a 4-12 record, Randy Moss lost at least two touchdowns that could have helped win two more games for Oakland for.....subtle contact in the end zone as he caught the touchdown. Neither time was the contact that was flagged in any way responsible for Randy making the catch unimpeded, but contact like that could just as easily been defensive pass interference. The "judgement" at the time was that Randy initiated the contact, which was ridiculous, but not reviewable.
That Jackson got caught doing similar contact hardly registers as very important to a fan of a team that gets ridiculous "judgement" calls that always goes against it without a word of dispair from anyone else in the country about how biased the referees must be toward the Raiders.
That these megagods refs can go unencumbered with the threat of fines or firings is the real crime of the NFL.
