Seahawks' Richard Sherman rips officiating crew after loss to Saints

The Seattle defensive back was not pleased with the penalty discrepancy

By John Breech

Oct 31, 2016 at 3:03 pm ET • 2 min read

Two weeks ago, Richard Sherman liked NFL officials. This week, he doesn't.

After the Seahawks' 25-20 loss to the Saints on Sunday, the Seattle defensive back had some choice words for the officiating crew from the game. Sherman ripped the crew because he says that they missed several calls.

"The calls -- or the lack thereof -- were pretty egregious," Sherman said, via ESPN.com. "It's just tough with the penalties. It's tough when you play a team that's averaging seven, eight penalties a game, and they get called for one [actually two] -- an obvious false start in the fourth quarter, which the refs really didn't want to call in the first place."

Richard Sherman was not happy with the officiating Sunday. USATSI

Going into the game, the Saints were being called for an average of 7.5 penalties per game, while the Seahawks were being called for 7.3 per game. Neither team came close to their average Sunday: The Seahawks were penalized 11 times (for 76 yards), while the Saints were only penalized twice (for 10 yards).

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll didn't go off on the officials quite like Sherman did, but he did mention that it was weird that the Saints were called for so few penalties.

"Yeah, because we went into the game knowing they're a team that gets a lot of penalties," Carroll said. "And we were in the same boat, so we thought that might match up for us and that might not be a deciding factor in the game. But the [11 penalties to two] thing, that's pretty far out of whack. There wasn't a significant penalty all day on the other side, so [the Saints] did a marvelous job."

Specifically, the Seahawks had an issue with two pick plays that the Saints ran on offense during the second half. One went for a 2-yard touchdown to Brandin Cooks, while the other ended with a Cooks 20-yard gain that came on a third-and-5 play on New Orleans' final offensive possession.

Even former NFL vice president of officiating Mike Pereira thought the Saints should've been called for a pick on the touchdown.

I think it was OPI. He blocked more than a yard downfield before the pass was touched by the receiver. #SEAvsNO
— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) October 30, 2016

"If you illegally block a guy instead of trying to get out of the way, you impede a guy's progress to his coverage; then it's a penalty," Carroll said.

Sherman echoed that sentiment.

"It's hard to play defense like that when you're in Cover 1, you're covering your guy, and you get knocked to the ground," Sherman said. "We can't touch the receivers without getting anything called on us, and they can block us 3, 4 yards down the field."

Of course, the Falcons probably think it's funny that Sherman is now complaining about the refs. In Week 6, Sherman appeared to get away with pass interference on a fourth-down play late in the game against Julio Jones. No flag was thrown though, and the Seahawks held on for the win.

It's not clear how Carroll or Sherman felt about the weirdest flag of the game: A hugging penalty.

After Earl Thomas returned a fumble for a touchdown, he got penalized for hugging an official.