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Bradley Sowell seems to think the NFL watches the Hawks closer than other teams. He said the Hawks OTAs have the least amount of contact that he has been around, claiming that they don't even where their helmets and it is more of a glorified walk through than an actual practice. He also says the Hawks get called for more holding calls than other teams. It's an interesting discussion and I know a lot of Hawk fans feel the same way. I do know that over the past few years the Hawks have been called for a lot of penalties (many of those procedural), while their opponents have been called for well under their yearly averages against us. I would be surprised if their was some league wide conspiracy against the Hawks, but I did notice a ridiculous disparity in the way OPI was called against our offense compared to offenses that we played (extremely obvious OPIs not called against the Saints and Falcons).

http://www.fieldgulls.com/2017/1/20/143 ... te-carroll

Just to flame the fire a bit here's another article from field gulls describing the penalty discrepancy in the 2014 season. This isn't the amount of penalties the Hawks had vs. their opponents but rather how many fewer penalties the Hawks opponents had when they played the Hawks then their average for the rest of the season. It was extreme. The Broncos were the second least helped team that year (team with the second lowest amount of opponent penalties) and their average penalty discrepancy should have happened to 1 in 8 teams. They were getting screwed but not as much as the Hawks who were the least helped team that year. So what would you expect their discrepancy rate might be? Maybe 1 in 9 or 10? Try 1 in 607. That is a crazy amount. Basically a team might get screwed this bad once every 20 years. The difference between our discrepancy and the broncos was the same as the broncos and the 23rd ranked team. Again I'm not saying that there definitely is anything there but that is pretty crazy. That isn't the only year that it has been that bad as I am pretty sure they rank first in this over the last three years.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.fieldgul ... ent=safari

Going back to his days at USC, Pete's been pretty widely known as a guy that likes to stretch the rules, doesn't run a real tight ship. There was a point where we were one of the league leaders in players violating the substance abuse policy as it applies to PED's. I don't know how much of an effect that notoriety has on the league, but it could explain some of the apparent discrepancy in enforcement activity around the Hawks camp.

As far as the penalties called on our opponents, I agree, it's something that should be noted and discussed with the head of officiating. Our opponents were not only the least penalized, they were the least penalized BY FAR, with our opponents averaging almost 25% fewer penalties and 22% less yardage than the next least penalized opponent. I'm not into the conspiracy theories or the type to make excuses, but that's a pretty big discrepancy for it to be rationalized as a statistical anomaly.

No fresher example could be found than the divisional. The ticky tack foul on Hester's electrifying return was panned by many in the media, not particularly seahawks fans.
It wouldnt be so bad had they not huddled for nearly a minute before deciding not to pick up a flag that was in effect an 85 yard penalty for something having nothing to do with the play at all.
Yet a few minutes earlier the Falcons threw a blatant pick on Lane on the goal line breaking up a double team and allowing Jones to walk in for the first Falcons score.
Piererra called it a pick from the booth but not the refs.It was pivotal to the play much like the 3 uncalled picks vs the Saints coupled by a PI on Shead in the same game where he literally ran the route for the reciever and intercepted the ball to boot.
They hate us. They hate our style, our uniforms, our coach. Everything Seattle gets has to be earned over and over.
It does get old.