How was this not a penalty against the Packers?

The Seattle Screwjob is something that still looms over the Packers-Seahawks rivalry and comes up anytime a call is blown.

Missing a call is the worst thing that an official can do. Millions of football fans are watching on gigantic high definition 4k television screens and somehow have a better view than a guy standing right in front of the action in real life.

There are instances where circumstantially fans think there is a penalty but it’s simply a case of folks thousands of miles away not having the best view of something (go figure, right?). Sunday in Green Bay was potentially a case of this, or that’s the easy excuse to be made for what looked like a blown call.

On a crucial third down in the third quarter of a tight game, Seattle Seahawks tight end Jimmy Graham appeared to be held by two Packers defenders thus preventing him from catching a touchdown.

Here’s the play:

There was no pass interference called on the play. In fact, there was no penalty at all called on the play, which enraged Seahawks fans on Twitter.

It’s easy to kill the officials for missing what aesthetically looks like a bad case of pass interference. There’s more to it than just looking at the two defenders holding down Graham. The ruling was that the ball was too high, out of the end zone, and therefore uncatchable.

Jimmy Graham is a thousand feet tall, so that’s a little debatable. We never got a solid angle of where the ball was in relation to Graham so it’s impossible to say whether or not he could have leapt for the ball and grabbed it.

There’s a much easier explanation to this or at least one that is easier to swallow. The official who made the call didn’t have his cap on, meaning someone stepped out of bounds. It could be that Graham was forced out of bounds at some point and therefore was ineligible to catch the ball. If that was the case, even if he had caught it the touchdown wouldn’t have stood.

If Wilson wouldn’t have thrown the ball away, it would have been much easier to make the case for pass interference. At the very least defensive holding was in the conversation, but as soon as the ball was deemed uncatchable everything went out the window.