Seattle wins a game of inches, miscues, and surprises

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

The Tony Romo bobbles the hold

The Seahawks against the Cowboys. It was supposed to be an offensive show all the way. We all expected both teams to just rack up the points. It didn’t happen that way.

Final Score Seattle Seahawks 21 Dallas Cowboys 20.

It was a lackluster 1st half. Have to admit, turned to a rerun of Naruto on the Cartoon Network for a while.

At the 5:57 mark Miles Austin of Dallas returned a kickoff 93 yards to put the Cowboys on top 17 to 13. Then early in he 4th quarter Marin Grammatica kicked a field goal to put the Cowboys up 20 – 13.

That is when all the craziness began.

Let the strange stuff begin for Seattle

Seattle was driving down the field and threw a deep ball to Bobby Engram. An interference call gave the Seahawks the ball on the 1.

The next set of sequences are just plain bizarre.

On first down, they hand off to Shaun Alexander, but they don’t run into the line. They run wide. Now this is last years touchdown leader and he set the record for touchdowns, but they run wide, miss a block and take about a 7 yard loss.

The magic Dallas pass rush

On second and third down the Cowboys get a strong rush, something they could not do against the Detroit Lions patch work offensive line. Seattle throws two passes, one incomplete, one for 6 yards.

Then with almost 7 minutes on the clock, Seattle elects to go for it on 4 down. Very questionable strategy by Seattle. Another strong rush from the Cowboys and an incomplete pass and it is the Cowboys ball.

The weird fumble and safety

The Cowboys pass to Terry Glenn in a wild play. Terry catches it, slips to the ground with the ball, untouched, gets up, the defender slaps the ball out of his hands and it bounces into the end zone.

It appeared that one of the Seattle players kept it in bounds and another grabbed it for a TD, but on further review the Seattle player keeping it in bounds was about 1 inch out of bounds with his foot. It was ruled a safety.

After the safety

Dallas punts with the score 20 – 15. Matt Hasselbeck uses 4 plays to get the Seahawks a TD to Jerramy Stevens for his 2nd touchdown of the night making it 21 -20. Seattle goes for two and guess what? Dallas gets a strong rush again and stops the 2 point conversion. Where did this rush come from?

On the ensuing drive, aided by a Julius Jones 35 yard run where the safety is inexplicably playing 20 yards deep, Dallas ends up with a 3rd and 7. Dallas passes to Witten for a first down at the 1 or did they?

The first down is challenged. On the replay you can see how strong NFL players are. Jason Witten catches the ball and turns up field and meets Lofa Tatupu, who plants his feet and bends like a banana, but stops all of Witten’s forward progress a foot short of the first down, then is joined by four other Seahawk defenders to drive Witten back.

Now the real craziness begins.

It is 4th down and out trots Martin Grammatica for an easy game winning field goal. This was shorter than extra point length. Grammatica is a deadly kicker. He has only missed two extra points since 1999 and this was just like an extra point with a little added pressure.

Now the holder was Tony Romo, which was odd since most teams do not want their starting quarterback as their holder. But remember, Drew Bledsoe was the starting quarterback for most of the beginning of the year, so Tony was the holder and they just kept it that way.

The hike came and Tony caught it clean and put it down and it sort of slid on the ground.

It was Lucy holding for Charlie Brown. Martin Grammatica took a half swipe, but got no ball. Tony scooped it up and began to run to the left side. Jordan Babineaux was coming from the right side.

Grammatica tried in vain to block Babineaux, but ended up just kind of pushing him.

Babineaux caught Tony’s legs and dragged him down maybe 6 inches from the first down.

Seattle had held on to the 21 – 20 lead. The game ended with a Dallas Hail Mary that failed.

NFL Football Fan Question Is it just regular playoff tightness or was this the craziest set of plays you have ever seen? Can Seattle beat any of the top seeds?

As always, any NFL Football related comments are welcome.

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