The day John Riggins retired from the Washington Redskins I stopped being a Redskins fan. In fact, in last nights playoff game I was pulling for the Seattle Seahawks, and they were clearly the better team. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Seahawks benefited from a blown call in route to a 24-14 victory over Washington.
Marshawn Lynch ran for a 27-yard score with 7:08 remaining in the game. It was a fantastic run that was made even more compelling because Lynch’s quarterback, Russell Wilson, threw a key block that allowed the running back to score. TV announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were duly impressed by the rookie QBs gutsy play. And, it was gutsy. It was also a penalty. Missed in the excitement of the score and the unusual lead blocker was the fact that Russell Wilson committed a “block in the back” penalty that should have negated the score and moved the Seahawks back 10 yards from the spot of the foul, the six-yard line.
Russell Wilson leads the way with an illegal block in the back!
By my calculations, that means the Seahawks should have had it first and ten at the 16-yard line instead of a touchdown. It’s a fairly significant non-call because the Seahawks were behind 14-13 when they scored.
What does all this mean? Nothing except that it may demonstrate further that the Seahawks are a team of destiny this year. They benefited from a bad call by replacement refs earlier in the year in a game against the Packers. Green Bay intercepted a ball in the end zone with no time left on the clock only to have a replacement referee inexplicably call it a touchdown for the Seahawks. Without that win, it’s possible the Seahawks wouldn’t make the playoffs.
I happen to think Seattle is the team with the most momentum remaining in the playoffs, and I’m predicting they will beat the Falcons next week, but it’s still fun to piss off the Seahawks faithful with speculations of what could have been had the referees not missed that call.
The South Side of the Moon 
it’s not “likely” they would have missed the playoffs at all, since they made it by 2 games, it’s actually unlikely. They won vs. 49ers to clinch, and then won again in the last game of the season, giving them a 2 game margin. Since they still have to play on the road through the playoffs, the bad call to end the game vs the packers had no impact on their playoff chances.
Also the reason the ‘illegal’ block wasn’t called is because the Redskins player turned his back to the blocker at the last second. Refs don’t call that.
The 2-game lead wasn’t my point on not making the playoff. A loss to the Packers would have had a ripple effect across the NFC. In other words, it wouldn’t have just effected Seattle. It would have changed the complexity of the playoff hunt for the entire conference. Games are approached differently by every team. It’s possible Seattle would have still made the playoffs, but different games would have had playoff implications over the course of the season, again not just for the Seahawks but for the entire NFC. And I disagree that the defender turned his back. It was a no-call, but bad-calls and no-calls are part of the game. It’s not the reason the Redskins lost.