L-yes Wrote:And I could go on.
so could I... we could post articles back and forth all day.
History will not show this Steelers victory as "tainted"; the Seahawks had the opportunities and they didn't take advantage. Pittsburgh did.
for example:
DETROIT -- Lofa Tatupu sat behind a microphone wearing his game pants and a trademark undershirt to which he took scissors and fashioned into a muscle shirt. His Seahawks mates did much the same last night: They cut themselves.
They cut themselves down below Super Bowl XL size.
"Uncharacteristic," Tatupu, the Seahawks' rookie middle linebacker, tried to explain after the 21-10 loss to the Steelers inside Ford Field. Like his Seahawks mates, he failed. "I don't know. I don't know how to sum it up.
"I wish there was a reason I could give you. That's the way it goes."
This was the way it went for the NFC champions on the biggest stage, in a championship where they entered with a 15-3 record and victories in 13 of their past 14 games but entered the Motor City as an underdog:
They dropped a minimum of four passes, three by linebacker Joey Porter's favorite "soft" tight end, badly bearded Jerramy Stevens.
They committed seven penalties, two of them erasing a touchdown and a completion to the Steelers' 1-yard line.
They gave up not only their longest running play of the season, but the longest offensive play, period, in Willie Parker's back-breaking, 75-yard touchdown run on the second half's second play from scrimmage.
They got as many interceptions thrown by quarterback Matt Hasselbeck -- one, at a time when Seattle was close to some kind of much-needed score amid a tenuous, 14-10 Steelers lead -- as he had thrown in his previous half-dozen games.
They missed back-to-back field-goal attempts of 50-plus yards by Josh Brown.
They misfired on five of their last six third-down conversion tries.
They converted just one of their three trips inside the Steelers' 20, and this from the NFL's leader in the territory known as the red zone.
They just kept cutting and undercutting themselves.
"We made a lot of mistakes," Tatupu offered meekly. "We kept hurting ourselves. That's stuff we can't have. The team that makes the fewest mistakes comes out on top."
Tatupu started out losing mates on defense, then ground in the game and on the scoreboard.
Safety Marquand Manuel sustained a hip injury while pushing MVP Hines Ward out of bounds in the first half on a reverse, pushing third-team safety Etric Pruitt into the game --starter and defensive soul Ken Hamlin was lost earlier in the year after a nightclub scrap hospitalized him with serious injuries.
Then defensive tackle Rocky Bernard hurt a hamstring in the third quarter.
That was after Parker had damaged the defense with that touchdown run, where he juked safety Michael Boulware at the line of scrimmage and, as he put it, "trotted after that," most of 75 yards.
All Tatupu said of the play: "It was long."
Before that, though, the Seahawks were stumbling and bumbling. Brown missed two field goals from range where he converted seven of 12 previously in his three-year career. Darrell Jackson had an apparent, 16-yard touchdown pass late in the first quarter nullified by his own error: a penalty for offensive interference when he stuck out his right arm and pushed Steelers safety Chris Hope. An 18-yard Jackson catch to the Steelers' 23 on Seattle's second possession was nullified on a holding penalty against center Robbie Tobeck. Right tackle Sean Locklear erased Stevens' 18-yard pass to the Steelers' 1 five plays into the fourth quarter when he was flagged for grabbing a handful of Clark Haggans' jersey. Three plays later, Ike Taylor picked off a Hasselbeck pass; he hadn't thrown an interception in his previous five games.
"I kept feeling like we were getting momentum, getting yardage," said Tobeck, pointing to the Seahawks' 5-0 advantage in first downs through the first quarter and 396 yards overall compared to the Steelers' 339. "I felt like we were moving the ball all day, we just couldn't ..."
"In those situations, you can't have penalties," perennial Pro Bowl offensive left tackle Walter Jones added.
This marked Mike Holmgren's second consecutive loss on this stage, his Green Bay Packers losing to Denver is Super Bowl XXXII.
"We had yardage taken away by penalties," Holmgren said. "But the only stat that counts is the score at the end of the game."
"It's a tough one to take right now," Tatupu said.
Holmgren spoke to his team afterward, asking them to remember this sorrowful, morose feeling of the loss in the NFL's ultimate game.
"While you don't like this feeling," he said, "I want them to use that feeling the next time they get in a game like this."
And when will that be? After all, this is a star-crossed franchise that went more the two decades without a playoff victory until this year.
"We'll be back," Tatupu said, "next year."
