Someone Get Richard Sherman Some Kleenex STAT

#Seahawks locker-room video: Richard Sherman says officiating was "egregious." Offers examples, of course pic.twitter.com/Vooe9TLPlr

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) October 30, 2016

Okay, let's just start by stating the obvious. The Saints - for once - benefited from the officiating yesterday. That's not to say that Seattle didn't earn their flags, but it is to say that New Orleans almost certainly deserved more than two measly false start penalties. Even the most black & gold tinted glasses can't shadow the obvious truth that there was a little home cooking going down in the Dome yesterday. Any Saints fan with an ounce of objectivity  is smart enough to admit that.

That said, Richard Sherman is also smart enough to know that he has no leg to stand on when it comes to whining about officiating. After all - as we've been reminded a nauseatingly countless amount of times - he did go to Stanford. One would think an Ivy Leaguer like himself would be intelligent enough to recount his offense's famously unsuccessful use of the very same pick play that he spent the better part of the postgame bellyaching about. How quickly he forgets that he's part of a team - and more so a secondary - that went to back-to-back Super Bowls on the back of a strategy that is best simplified as "well, they can't call everything...". I mean, disagreeing with a penalty or two is one thing, but playing the victim for a full two minutes seems a bit overboard. Complaints about the officiating overlapping into the same microphone from two different sources at one time like it was some sort of bitch-ception really clouds the main narrative of the game.

The Seahawks - save for one fumble return for a touchdown - got their balls handed to them yesterday. The result certainly could have been altered by as much as one more flag in the wrong direction, but if I were Seattle I wouldn't be waiting in the rain by the proverbial mailbox for an apology. New Orleans has been on the ass end of far too many phantom, game changing calls to feel sympathy for a team that's been reaping the rewards of uncalled penalties for years. Even Julio Jones would agree that this little "defensive backs in distress" routine is an example of an extremely short memory that should have a certain prestigious university asking for their diploma back, and he's part of a rivalry with the team that it's being made at the expense of.