Pete Carroll Not Happy With The Ref Show In Seahawks-Cowboys Contest That Featured 257 Penalty Yards

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Thursday night's Seattle Seahawks - Dallas Cowboys contest was more of an officiating showcase with a little football mixed in, and Seattle head coach Pete Carroll wasn't thrilled about the ref show that broke out.

The flags were aplenty in Jerry World during the Cowboys' 41-35 win. The two teams combined for 19 penalties for a total of 257 penalty yards. The Seahawks led the charge with 10 flags for 130 yards in penalties with the Cowboys picking up nine flags of their own.

Speaking after his team's tough loss, Carroll alluded to the Seahawks having to compete against "another factor" in the game.

"It's unfortunate that it feels like there was a whole 'nother factor in this game," Carroll said during his postgame presser. "I don't know, you guys saw it a lot better than I did, but there was just way too many penalties in this game, for both sides. We've got to get out of that kind of football."

 

While Carroll's frustration is understandable, so many flags being thrown with these two teams on the field shouldn't exactly be a stunner. The Seahawks entered the contest as the most-penalized team in the NFL while Dallas was the second-most penalized team.

Carroll specifically took issue with a delay of game penalty during the first quarter ahead of a Seahawks' field goal attempt. He believed the play clock should have been reset, but instead, Seattle was pushed back five yards and Jason Myers missed what would have been a 37-yard field goal that turned into a 42-yarder.

 

Six of Seattle's 10 penalties were either illegal contact, defensive holding, or defensive pass interference, and Carroll made it clear he didn't agree with all of them.

"They know the game, they know how to make these calls, but they can't call everything that when there's a little this and a little that, and particularly when it doesn't affect the play," he said.

The Seahawks have now lost three straight games and have separated themselves, in a bad way, from the NFC West-leading San Francisco 49ers.

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Mark covers all sports at OutKick while keeping a close eye on the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, and all other happenings in the world of golf. He graduated from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga before earning his master's degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee. He somehow survived living in Knoxville despite ‘Rocky Top’ being his least favorite song ever written. Before joining OutKick, he wrote for various outlets including SB Nation, The Spun, and BroBible. Mark was also a writer for the Chicago Cubs Double-A affiliate in 2016 when the team won the World Series. He's still waiting for his championship ring to arrive. Follow him on Twitter @itismarkharris.