This one is going to hurt for a while

This loss will gnaw at them the rest of this winter. It will follow them into off-season workouts. It will haunt their dreams.

The Seahawks will wake up out of a sound sleep in a cold sweat and remember the dropped passes, the missed field goals, the punt that rolled dead on their 2-yard line, the penalties.

They will look at the game film later this week and realize they should have been ahead about 24-0 at halftime. They will see that they kicked the Pittsburgh Steelers up and down Ford Field.

They will see Walter Jones burying Joey Porter deep into the artificial surface. They will see Jerramy Stevens running open in the middle of the field, time after time after time.

But they will also see the blizzard of mistakes and they will wince at what might have been.

“We stubbed our foot a couple of times,” receiver Joe Jurevicius said. “And that’s all I have to say on that.”

Dave Boling Tacoma News Tribune

Hawks did it to selves

Some Seahawks faithful may protest that the Super Bowl was lost because of the influence of the Steelers’ 12th man – the referee.

Or maybe it was the back judge, or the line judge. Penalties nullified several big plays, including a touchdown, and disrupted the early momentum.

But dwell instead on this: The Seahawks fell 21-10 in Super Bowl XL because they contributed greatly to their own demise.

Because they reverted to some detrimental old habits.

Patrick McManamon Akron Beacon Journal

Steelers didn’t win it

The score says the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl XL. The reality is the Seattle Seahawks lost it.

Lost it by dropping passes, missing chances and committing penalties that negated big gains.

Lost it by not taking control of the game early, when they had many chances to do just that.

Lost it by stumbling around on offense to a season-low 10 points.

Hate the Steelers if you will.

Curse them.

Gnash your teeth at them.

But understand that they’re not stupid, and if the other team wants to give them chance after chance in the biggest game of the year, they will take those chances and go home with the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Tom Sorensen Charlotte Observer

Seahawks not ready

Sometimes a team steps onto the grandest stage in U.S. sports and, in front of a national and international audience of millions, it shines. Other times it fills space between expensive commercials.

Seattle filled space Sunday.

The best team in the NFC all season, the Seahawks came undone. Every time they appeared to remember who they were, they gave up a huge play, or turned the ball over, or committed a penalty, or committed a marginal, almost imaginary, penalty.

Jason Whitlock Kansas City Star

Referees were brutal

What crime-ridden, boarded-building, automotive-industry-ravaged, snowy Detroit couldn’t do, an NFL officiating crew pulled off with relative ease in front of plenty of bored-silly football fans inside beautiful Ford Field.

Sports’ and television’s most indestructible beast – the Super Bowl – met its match in the 40th playing of the game the world stops to watch.

The inevitable finally happened. A group of middle-aged executives trying to keep pace with a group of highly trained 20-something athletes destroyed America’s sports holiday.

Pittsburgh’s one-for-the-thumb Super Bowl will be remembered as the game when physically overmatched referees and heads-buried NFL executives flipped non-Steelers fans an XL middle finger.