It’s not often that a team goes 1-for-5 in the red zone, has 14 penalties for 105 yards and still wins the game by 16 points on the road against an opponent with a winning record.

That’s what happened Thanksgiving night when the Seattle Seahawks defeated the San Francisco 49ers 19-3 at Levi’s Stadium.

The 49ers only had three penalties for 20 yards. In the past five games, the Seahawks have been penalized 40 times for 344 yards, compared with only 18 penalties for 155 yards for the opponents.

In each of those five games, the Seahawks had more penalties than the opponent, but Seattle still managed to win four of those five games.

Complaining about penalty calls is a touchy subject with the NFL, but the Seahawks' coaches and players see a disturbing pattern of picking on the defending Super Bowl champions.

When asked about the penalty situation Thursday night, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll carefully made his feelings clear.

“The pattern between our penalties and their penalties again,” Carroll said. “You’ve got to be first in something, I guess, so that’s what it is. The only thing is I wished they called some penalties on the other guys.”

It’s not that they are calling so many penalties on the Seahawks. It’s that officials call so few penalties on their opponents.

For example, the NFL said pass interference should have been called against Kansas City’s Sean Smith in the end zone when he pushed Seattle receiver Doug Baldwin, a decision that could have changed the outcome of that Seahawks loss.

The penalty discrepancy didn’t really hurt the Seahawks on Thursday night, but the team was upset with the pass interference call against running back Robert Turbin on what would have been a TD catch by receiver Paul Richardson. Turbin was lined up in the slot and ran a crossing route when he ran into a defender.

“They [the 49ers] were in zero coverage,” Carroll said. “They had one guy covering the slant and a player [Turbin] runs right into him. They’re going to run into each other. We wish the officials would see it’s a route and two guys ran into each other rather than we were picking somebody, because we weren’t. But that’s the way it is.”

The Seahawks have been one of the most penalized teams in the league the past two seasons, partially because they play a very aggressive style. But they do think there’s an imbalance when you look at the numbers.