Would you admit that the biggest detractors/deniers that anything shady went on were mostly Falcons' fans?
I watched the refs **** the Falcons in the Superbowl. Falcons had 9 penalties called and the Pats had 4, but more importantly it was when the penalties were called,
First Penalty on Atlanta was a relatively worthless holding call.
First penalty on New England was an illegal formation on an extra point
Second Penalty on Atlanta was defensive holding on 3rd down.
Third Penalty on Atlanta was defensive holding on 3rd down.
Fourth PEnalty on Atlanta was defensive holding on 3rd down. All these happened when the Patriots were down 14-0. ALl on the same drive which didn't matter because od Alford's pick 6.
Second NE Penalty was Holding before the half. May have cost them 4 points, hard to say.
Third Penalty on NE was DPI on 3rd down in the redzone.
Fourth PEnalty on NE was illegal touching on the onsides kick.
Fifth Penalty on Atlanta was a holding call on 2nd and 1, the play wouldn't have resulted in a first down, but it moved what was a makable field goal to outside of field goal range. As well as gave New England a lot of clock because Shanahan called a pass play on the redo. Granted the play was a great throw by Ryan but better defense by Chung so Chung deserves more credit than Shanahan the blame, but his playcallin was problematic.
Sixth Penalty was a worthless delay of game.
7th Penalty was a HUGE penalty, the biggest call of the game. It was 3rd and 23 on the NE 35. Ryan made a 9 yard completion to Sanu. Which could have made a virtual lock of a field goal for Matt Bryant, but another holding was called.
8th penalty was worthless defensive offsides on the 2 point conversion that was added to the kick.
9th penalty was DPI against Atlanta in OT and it was a bad one.
So unless you're gonna tell me that Jake Matthews was the only offensive lineman holding the whole game and only Atlanta defenders committed defensive holding on one play, I could easily build a case that the refs were out to **** Atlanta.
But here's the thing, what the refs did mattered minimally. WHat mattered much more was that Kyle SHanahan when he had the ball at the New England 22 after Julio Jones should have sealed the game called a passing play on 2nd down, 3rd down (penalty) and 3rd down. If instead of any of those passing plays, the falcons just kneeled the ball and kicked the field goal, New England has 1 timeout and are down by 11, or they hold onto those timeouts and have only 2 minutes left. Or you just keep calling running plays and maybe you break a first down or 2 and just end the game. I dunno. Eitherway it wasn't the refs who only called offensive holding on Jake Matthews, it wasn't them, it was Atlanta's defense not stepping up in the second half and it was Shanahan's totally boneheaded decision to abandon safety and sanity and instead pass. Of course I mean it was similar to NE's fumble recovery. 3rd and 1 and Shanahan calls a pass play when they're up by 16. If they run the ball there, there's a healthy chance they don't give New England the ball after thier next TD as their Scoring drive certainly woudl have taken longer than 2:28 second.
