A lot less to discuss this week
Dear penalty nerds. I’m sorry. So, so sorry. I know how much you look forward to intricate rules explanations and arguments, proprietary math, and GIFs to play the modern version of “You Make The Call” at home.
The Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins combined to make one of the most boring penalty outputs we’ve ever seen. Feel free to read it I guess, but I won’t take it personally if you skip this week. As a heads up, I planned on making GIFs of a couple Dolphins ones because why not?
For some reason the NFL is electing to pretend my subscription for the coaches film doesn’t exist so another apology is in order. We’ll cross our fingers that’s rectified before… waves hands at everything else except maybe Wingin’ It.
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Counts
For the record, I likely could have had this article done within minutes after the game. I wanted to wait until Sunday evening to at least let some of the league data trickle in. Not that it’s super compelling but at least it’s something. The crazy thing is that the Dolphins had a pretty ordinary day when it comes to flags. Buffalo’s results are so absurd it just makes the other side look wild.
The league averages for Week 1 were 7.04 assessed and 8.32 true count. It’s pretty surprising actually to see this far of a fall in one week. Now Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football could elevate things a bit (typing this just before halftime of SNF). That said, I wouldn’t be shocked to see a tick up next week as this is a pretty sharp change.
UPDATE: To demonstrate how big of a shift it really was this week, the SNF game featuring Land. ****ing. Clark and his crew tossed 23 total flags. This shifted the lines to 6.47 and 7.58 flags per team per game.
Penalty Yards
This is pretty much the same conversation as above. The Dolphins negated a 10-yard gain (see below) with a flag, which gave them the 60 true yards. That’s about as intriguing as this gets. The league average last week for assessed yards was nearly three yards per team per game higher, at 55.39 yards. That’s another pretty big change for a one week span.
UPDATE: The Land Clark fiasco upped the average by over a yard to 53.65, which is a pretty big impact for one game, but still shows off how far things changed from Week 1 to Week 2.
Penalty Harm
Miami Dolphins
This may be forever known as the “False-Start Game.” I mean, it won’t. No one cares about false starts. But if anyone did care enough to look back on this game and label it according to a penalty label, it would be known as that. If you’re new to the series, I don’t generally discuss false-start penalties because there’s nothing interesting about them. Aside from above, that trend will continue.
I’m going from memory here, but I recall thinking the unnecessary roughness on safety Jordan Poyer was the right call but not a dirty play. The 15 yards on the flag were tacked on after the catch and didn’t give up a first down as the pass already accomplished that. That means the Harm is an easy 1.5 to tabulate.
Offensive tackle Terron Armstead had the most impactful penalty of the day with an offensive holding in the second quarter. If you’re into this series, please read this next paragraph slowly as it’s the only remaining substance.
At their own 33-yard line with 2nd & 7, the holding pushed them back to the 23. In addition, during the play, Jaylen Wright had gained 10 yards — enough for a first down. The holding call wiped out that 10 yards as well as the first down. For the formula lovers, that’s 1.0 for the 10 assessed, 1.0 for the 10 negated, and 1.0 for the one down negated for 3.0 Harm. Miami was able to gain 14 of the 17 they needed for a first down, which demonstrates how much harder a holding call can make things.
The total Harm for Miami fell in at 7.0, which is below our bad-game delineation of 10.0 Harm or higher.
Buffalo Bills
This chart is bad and it should feel bad. There is zero to dissect, discuss or remotely care about this week. I feel silly even having a section for the Bills for this. For the record, I wouldn’t mind a few more easy weeks.