The Seahawks were trailing the 49ers by five points on Sunday night, and driving with less than two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. With the ball at the SF 12-yard line and 55 seconds remaining in the game, Russell Wilson fired a throw to tight end Jacob Hollister in the end zone.
Hollister was unable to even make an attempt to catch the ball, however, because 49ers linebacker Fred Warner mugged him in the end zone. Everyone waited for the flag to be thrown at Warner’s feet for pass interference, but nothing happened. No flag was thrown.
As there were fewer than two minutes remaining in the game, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was not allowed to challenge the call. HOWEVER, the league does have rules in place now where the league office can choose to review the play if they feel blatant PI occurred.
That … didn’t happen. For some reason. Seattle even called timeout after the play to give the league office time to review the decision, and … they didn’t. Nothing happened. Or they did quickly and decided not to do anything.
The call had massive repercussions. The Seahawks (thanks in part to some boneheaded coaching from Carroll) would go on to lose the game by five points.
That loss gave the 49ers the No. 1 seed in the NFC, and knocked the Saints out of a first-round bye in the process.
So now you had furious Seahawks fans, AND furious Saints fans who felt that had been cheated by another terrible, missed pass interference call.
As to how bad the call was? Well, yeah, it was pretty bad.
