Here are the facts: Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman jumped offside on a field-goal attempt late in the first half and steamrolled Bills kicker Dan Carpenter in the process. Sherman was flagged for jumping early, but not for roughing the kicker, despite doing just that.
On this everyone can agree -- the NFL's vice president of officiating even tweeted about it moments later! Right? Right?!
Pete Carroll would like a word.
"[Carpenter] hams it up a little bit too [much], which makes it bad," the Seahawks coach told 710 ESPN Seattle, though he added, that Sherman should have been flagged. Carroll also rightly noted that penalizing Sherman is up to the officials, and they chose not to.
Here's how referee Walt Anderson explained the non-decision after the game: "We were shutting the play down, that would be my call. I just didn't feel like the actions and the contact, because we were shutting the play down, warranted a foul."
Dean Blandino, who oversees the league's officials, disagreed in a halftime tweet:
At the end of the half in #BUFvsSEA its unnecessary roughness for hitting the kicker. Foul means he can stay in the game.
— Dean Blandino (@DeanBlandino) November 8, 2016
Meanwhile, Bills coach Rex Ryan basically called missed call, as well as the chaos that immediately ensued, a clown show.
"Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous," he said. "It's clear what happened, the guy roughed our kicker. Jumps offsides, roughs our kicker. And then because we had to go out and attend to him, and it wasn't called roughing the kicker, then we had to spike the ball so we can come back in and kick."
Ryan also had some advice for Richard Sherman, who engaged the Bills coach in an impromptu staring contest.
Carroll's response to Ryan's response to Carroll's players? "I just wish he'd coach his own team. That's it. Just coach your own guys."
Obvious notable exception: Commenting on whether the opponent is hamming it up.
There is a silver lining to all this: Blandino promised to rectify the latest round of officiating blunders.
"We are absolutely going to address it," Blandino told NFL Network after the game. "Anytime you have a sequence like that at any point during the game we want to see what happened and just walk through the steps of where the breakdown was. Regardless of the outcome of the game, we are going to address the situation with our crew."