During most of the first half, as soon as the Hawks displayed any kind of momentum, the refs called a 10 or 15-yard penalty and killed the Hawks drives. I'm not saying they weren't guilty, but why did they make some ticky-tacky offensive line calls against the Hawks while simultaneously ignoring at least 10 offensive holding violations on the Cards that even I saw. How can we expect the Hawks to have a good game offensively when the refs squash almost every drive? On the first 4 drives, they had to deal with a 1st and 20 or a 1st and 25, and the drives resulted in 3 punts and a safety. And of course the refs gave the Cards a FG at the end of the first half by taking away what was clearly a turnover. The officiating was horrible for this game, and definitely far worse for the Hawks. I do believe that the NFL sometimes tell refs to "encourage" the direction of games based on parity. That said, the D has now lost 5 games in which they had a 4th quarter lead. That is more the fault of the Hawk players than it is the fault of the refs.
