I thought this was all over with...but I watched the game starting with the Holmes catch with all of this in mind.What I saw was that almost exactly 19 seconds passed from the time Holmes caught the ball until he began his celebration. You can see him start his cute little routine if you watch the broadcast. After the Steelers who were hugging him on the ground get off, Holmes gets up, turns toward the field of play, and then starts moving the ball before the camera cuts away to start showing replays of the reaction to the catch and of the catch itself. The interesting part of this is the information I heard that the refs are instructed to look for 15 seconds for celebrations. To those who believe the call was missed, I can understand your perspective. However, I hope you can agree that there needs to be some kind of time limit for when the officials start to move on to their other tasks.Bri, of course you're not the first to throw out the postulate of what would have happened if the celebration penalty had been called, and the hypothetical sequence of events usually goes like this:If a 15-yard penalty had been assessed on the kickoff, then the Cardinals would have had the ball at their own 38 instead of the 23.Then the "
29) (Shotgun) K.Warner pass deep left to L.Fitzgerald to ARZ 43 for 20 yards (L.Timmons) moves the ball to the PITT 42.And the "
22) (Shotgun) K.Warner pass short middle to J.Arrington to PIT 44 for 13 yards (J.Harrison) places the ball at the PITT 29.Then there are two variations of what happens next. One is that the Cardinals don't take as long to get the next pass off, as they don't need a full-blown Hail Mary type play. And you usually hear something like "and we all know how good Fitzgerald is on jump balls" as the kicker. The second full-blown conspiracy theorist approach is to look at the fumble that did occur and suggest it was an incomplete pass. Tack on the 15-yard celebration penalty on Woodley and it's Arizona's ball on the Pittsburgh 14 with one play left.The enormous flaw in the logic espoused above is the two tacit assumptions that are made in proposing these scenarios.1. Each play would have occurred exactly as they did in the original timeline (sorry, I know it sounds like a science fiction film).2. The Holmes celebration non-call was the only call that mattered in the game -- or even in the last 43 seconds of game time.Of course, although the conspiracy theorists are (sometimes) willing to entertain the possibility that Warner would not have been sacked and therefore not fumble if given 15 yards better field position, they tend not to allow for the possibility that the defensive approaches by the Steelers would likely have changed (at least some) if that indeed had been the case. It is reasonable to suggest that the exact plays -- especially the first pass to Fitz that was not a dump off -- may have been taken away or perhaps resulted in a lesser gain. If each play gains even a few less yards because the prevent defense is not as pronounced, then some of the 15 yards is negated.More importantly, expounding on item 2 above, it is only human nature to examine the result of the game and consider how the result might have been altered. By far, more thought is given to how the losing team may have won, both in terms of their missed opportunites and mistakes and yes, the officiating. So when the game is intensely scrutinized, play by play, looking for every POSSIBLE call that was favorable to the Steelers, then of course a case can be made that the officiating was a factor in the Steelers win. However, what tends to be missed is both the concept that officiating affects nearly every game to some degree and most significantly, that the calls/non-calls that helped Arizona are more or less ignored.So with all this in mind, those of you who have the game available to view should look at the kickoff following Holmes' touchdown. Patrick Bailey (#55) of the Steelers is heading straight down the field at the Arizona returner with a clean path to the ball carrier when a Cardinal (I think Francisco, #47) pushes him directly from behind, with both hands right on his numbers, pushing him to the side of the ball carrier. It happens right between the hashmarks at the 15-yard line.Are we allowed to factor this missed call into the final 35 seconds, or is it only the Holmes missed call? Let's have Reed kickoff from the 15-yard line. If called, this illegal block would have occurred at the 30-yard line. With the ten yard markoff, the first Arizona play would happen at the 20, instead of the 23 as it did. How's the new timeline look now? Which is the worse missed call? One that happened nearly 20 seconds after the play, or one that happened live a few yards ahead of the ball?Like I said, I understand the natural inclination to examine how the Cardinals might have won instead of the Steelers, but nearly any game can be analyzed on a play-by-play basis to find details that were POSSIBLY missed and/or flat-out wrong. But the officiating cannot be cherry-picked looking only at how it hurt one team. Most of all, what actually did happen cannot be assumed to play out the exact same way should one or two calls have been different.
I was also wondering why Warner didn't get 15 yards. Must be more of that "one sided" officiating. 
at one-sided officiating. The calls were bad in both directions. You need a tissue.........
