\jeff{krimmel}

Cowboys and Seahawks Craziness

The Seahawks defeated the Cowboys tonight with a series of nearly unbelievable plays. The most significant of these plays was Tony Romo’s bobbling of the snap for a nineteen yard field goal attempt with about one minute and nineteen seconds left in the game. The score at that point was 21 to 20 in favor of the Seahawks, and a successful field goal was quite likely going to earn the Cowboys the win.

Obviously it was beyond a devastating defeat for the Cowboys. All playoff losses hurt, but rarely do they have a higher gut-wrenching component than this one. I decided to search the blogosphere for reactions to the game, knowing these reactions would be fairly passionate. I found some gems.

I was amazed this woman was even able to write her blog post:

My heart literally broke as I watched the last minutes of the Dallas/Seattle game tonight.

She was able to persevere through a literally broken heart, an ailment that would have killed most human beings, to write her blog post detailing her frustration at the result of tonight’s game. For some reason, I just can’t get enough of people using the word “literally” as a stronger form of the word “figuratively”. Her heart didn’t just figuratively break; it literally broke, in a figurative sense of course.

This man literally hopes Terrell Owens dies. And I do mean literally here:

Maybe, if we’re lucky, Terrell will decide to grab headlines again and just OD successfully this time. God forgive me, but that’d make me one happy man.

At least he asks God to forgive him for his public wish for another person’s death.

This person had a great description for what happened on the bobbled snap:

It was Lucy holding for Charlie Brown.

And if you look at the play again, it looked pretty darn close to just that.

This person had a good point I hadn’t thought about:

You know the interesting part in all this, I swear that dumb s*%$ made it to the 1 yd line. Look at the tape.

Well, I DVR’ed the game, so I did go back and look at the tape. I guess that’s an important part of the play I didn’t mention. After Romo bobbled the snap, he made the heads up play of picking up the ball and trying to advance it by running around the left side of the line. If he made it to about the one yard line, it would have been enough for a first down, because it wasn’t fourth and goal.

I took some time to look at several of NBC’s replays. One of the replays was a sideline shot that seemed to look straight down the goal line. When I viewed that replay at 1/15th speed, it was clear that Romo’s knee hit the ground around the two yard line or so, and the ball had not reached the one yard line, which was the first down line. The ball might have been around the one and a half yard line or so. Even if Romo didn’t fumble the ball, or even if they looked at it and ruled he was down by contact before the fumble happened, there was no video evidence that I saw that would lead me to believe he got a first down on that scramble.

Crazy, crazy play, and just a crazy, crazy finish to the game. I can’t remember a playoff game ending in a weirder series of events than this one did.