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Running the Numbers: How Much Do Penalties Hurt NFL Teams?
Jonathan Bales
http://thedctimes.com/2012/06/running-the-numbers-how-much-do-penalties-hurt-nfl-teams/
I’ve been fascinated by the relationship between penalties and winning for a few years now, even though I haven’t necessarily written extensively on the subject in this forum. When the Cowboys signed offensive tackle Alex Barron a few years ago, I wrote an article on the negative impact of Barron’s false starts. The tackle had committed 43 false starts over the previous five seasons in St. Louis.
From that post:
Barron’s false starts were responsible for the loss of 24.4 expected points over the course of five seasons, or about five points per year. In essence, each false start cost the Rams 1/2 expected point, which is in line with league averages.
Expected points are one thing, but how do the false starts and subsequent loss of expected points affect a team’s win total? Well, five points over the course of a season translates to just about .12 wins. Thus, Barron’s (and those of Adams) false starts were annoying, but not as costly to a team’s success as you might believe.
One of the things I may have overlooked in that article on Barron is what sort of style of play accompanies certain types of penalties. False starts and other mental mistakes, although often not devastating to a team in terms of lost yards, come with no benefits. Players who frequently false start likely don’t have a tremendous mental grasp in other aspects of their game, such as blocking assignments and so on.
On the other hand, penalties such as roughing the passer and defensive pass interference are the result of aggressive play. The mindset that accompanies such penalties can lead to benefits for a team, such as interceptions and sacks. Thus, although more detrimental than mental errors in a limited sense, aggressive penalties might be the inevitable result of an attacking style of play.
That’s exactly what I found in my latest Running the Numbers post at DallasCowboys.com. Check it out:
On paper, everything adds up for defensive pass interference to lead to defeat. The call itself can be incredibly disadvantageous to a defense, providing the offense with the ball at the spot of the foul, plus an automatic first down. On top of that, you’d expect poor defenses to commit more pass interference infractions because they get out of position. Lastly, bad teams tend to have their defense on the field a lot, i.e. more time to accrue penalties.
However, teams that generate a lot of pass interference calls aren’t actually more likely to lose than those that limit the penalty. Since 2006, teams that have finished in the top 10 in defensive pass interference (meaning they were flagged the least often) have won 7.9 games per season. Those in the bottom 10 have won 8.0 games per year.
You can see above that in four of the past six seasons teams that finished with the most pass interference calls won the same amount or more games than the teams with the fewest pass interference penalties.
As I tracked different types of penalties, I noticed the same trend; those that come as a result of aggressive play (such as pass interference, roughing the passer and illegal contact) aren’t correlated to losing football games. This is so astounding because these penalties are often the most harmful to a team.
I realize looking at defensive pass interference alone results in a limited sample size, but the trend extends over most “aggressive” penalties. I find this fascinating.
The results of this study suggest teams shouldn’t really do everything possible to limit penalties. Aggressive play without penalties is of course ideal, but probably not possible. Some penalties are the result of a specific style of play that, as the numbers show, leads to more benefits than disadvantages. It’s a medium risk/high reward style of play that is superior to the low risk/low reward style of play that characterized the pre-Rob Ryan Dallas Cowboys defense.
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Is “Discipline” Overrated In The NFL?
Reuben Fischer-Baum
1/07/14 1:39pm
http://regressing.deadspin.com/is-discipline-overrated-in-the-nfl-1496283805
The 2013-14 Seahawks finished the year with a 13-3 record, a +186 point differential, and +40.1 percent DVOA, making them arguably the best team in the NFL. They also led the league in penalties (128) and penalty yards (1,193). Baltimore led in both categories last year and won the Super Bowl over the 49ers, who were second in penalty yards. We’re told time and again by broadcasters and pundits that good teams have to be “disciplined,” by which they largely mean “not prone to penalties.” Is “discipline” overrated?
To find out, we compared penalty totals by team, from 2009 through 2013, to points scored, points allowed, and total point differential for each season. Data comes from the site NFL Penalty Stats Tracker (thanks to BestTicketsBlog for pointing us toward the site). It’s possible that better teams could accrue more penalties because they play at a faster pace (and get more opportunities to commit penalties); to control for this we looked at the percentage of snaps—offensive, defensive, and total—in which the team got flagged.
If discipline is instrumental to success, we’d expect to see offensive penalty rate linked to points scored, defensive penalty rate linked to points allowed, and total penalty rate linked to point differential.
This data show no statistically significant correlation between penalty rates and offensive, defensive, or team performance. The negative relationship between offensive penalties and points scored is the closest to significant; I suspect that if I bumped up my sample by a couple seasons it would prove to be a statistically valid but extremely small effect (as is, p=0.08). You can perform the same analysis using pace-adjusted penalty yards instead of penalty totals and get similar results (offense r=-0.118, defense r=-0.09, total r=0.115).
So what does this mean? This doesn’t imply that penalties aren’t bad for teams; individual penalties are clearly detrimental on both offense and defense. What it does imply, I think, is that the sort of teams that accumulate more penalties—teams you might call “aggressive” when they’re winning—aren’t necessarily bad teams, and the sort of teams that accumulate fewer penalties aren’t necessarily good teams.
Given the advantages that can come from plays that get you flagged, the best place for a team to be is just barely on the good side of the rulebook. It would make sense that an aggressive team that tried to live in this gray area (resulting in some flags) would be better off than a relatively passive team that never comes close to committing anything resembling a penalty, but gets bulldozed. Something to keep in mind when the penalty-heavy Detroit Lions implode again in 2014 and prompt another 1,000 articles about how they’re “undisciplined.”
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Flags are Seahawks’ best friend1/29/2015 – NFL Seattle Seahawks
David Fleming, ESPN Senior Writer
There’s a team in Super Bowl XLIX that, for years, has created a major competitive advantage by blatantly disregarding NFL rules.
I’m talking about the Seattle Seahawks, of course.
Over the past three years the Seahawks have done something no one in the white-socks-and-black-shoes, stuck-in-the-1950s NFL ever dreamed possible, or legal. Since 2012 Seattle has been at the top of the NFL in wins (tied with 36), Super Bowl appearances and … penalties.
The best team in the league has been penalized so many times (416) in the last three seasons that I’m pretty sure the fluorescent yellow trim on the Seahawks uniforms is actually just residue from all the penalty flags. Still, Seattle’s success isn’t in spite of all the penalties. It’s inspired by it. Without anyone really noticing, Seattle has created a blossoming dynasty in the most competitive league in the world by completely, and brilliantly, turning the stigma of penalty flags upside down; embracing infractions rather than avoiding them at all costs.
Now, of course, you can jimmy the stats a few different ways to move Seattle off the top spot in penalties but it changes almost nothing. Bottom line, the Seahawks are still among the most successful, most penalized teams in the NFL — a combination that a generation of football coaches and experts told us was both totally impossible and highly dishonorable.
Through 18 games, the Seahawks not only have been called for a league-high 144 penalties (according to NFLpenalties.com) their opponents have only been flagged just 80 times. Yes, you read that correctly. The Seahawks have been called for almost twice as many penalties as their opponents.
Inside “Law & Order: NFL,” the Seahawks have found a way to make penalty flags meaningless while rendering the ultimate authority of officials little more than an illusion.
Let that soak in for a minute.
“We’re not going to change the way we’re playing,” head coach Pete Carroll explained earlier this season on ESPN Radio 710 in Seattle. “The style of play that generates this kind of focus from the officials is somewhat emblematic of us. I don’t want our guys to back off.” Later, he added: “We are pretty crazy and wild, the way we play, and we don’t want to change that.”
Why would they?
In a game of violence, aggression, speed and emotion, the Seahawks simply looked at the risk/reward and realized it is far better to play on the razor’s edge (and beyond), to bend the rules, manhandle opponents and incur an extra flag (or 20) and, ya know, WIN THE GAMES, rather than fall in line, play like a Boy Scout and watch the playoffs from home just like the NFL’s least penalized team, the 3-13 Jaguars (73).
Meanwhile, several of the top teams in the league — Seattle, New England, Denver and Baltimore, most notably — have all been at, or near the top of the NFL in penalties the last three seasons. A year ago Seattle became the first team in at least a decade to get flagged 10 times in the Super Bowl and win. In doing so, the Seahawks so manhandled and intimidated the Broncos receivers that, by the end of the game, I swear it looked like Eric Decker didn’t even want to leave the protection of the huddle. Julian Edelman? You’re next, pal.
So, yeah, your high school football coach — the guy who withheld water to build “toughness” during summer two-a-days — he might tell you the sloppy, undisciplined Seahawks were just lucky to overcome their penalty problem and somehow get back to the big game. But the truth of the matter is the Seahawks have expertly exploited a TV-centric business model (flags are boring for viewers and bad for ratings) and ridden a magic yellow nylon carpet stitched from 144 tiny penalty flags back to the Super Bowl and the doorstep of NFL immortality.
This all started last year, of course, when the Seahawks revolutionized pass interference by using the same logic loophole that offensive linemen have been exploiting for years with holding. The idea is: you hold on almost every play, knowing the refs won’t throw 50 flags per game. If everything is holding, the thinking goes, then nothing really is. Brilliant. Seattle just took that approach and applied it to pass coverage and it was so effective and disruptive they forced the NFL to change the rules regarding defensive holding and pass interference.
I thought the Seahawks might be on to something last year when I contacted a long-time NFL official, and even he had to begrudgingly hand it to Seattle for “exploiting a loophole of human nature” in the NFL — that there’s simply a finite number of flags that can be thrown in any game. I thought about it a little more when I kept hearing defensive coaches remind players in camp “they can’t throw flags on every play.” But I knew a revolution was afoot when the normally draconian disciplinarian Bill Belichick imported Seattle corner (and penalty-flag machine) Brandon Browner. The Pats, by the way, were tied for fourth in the NFL in penalties this season. (Ironically, New England may fall victim in this Super Bowl to a penalties-be-damned trend they actually started in Super Bowl XXXVI when they bullied, battered and bruised Marshall Faulk on every possible play.)
After the league-wide crackdown on pass interference, the 2014 Seahawks changed their ways — kind of. This season they were flagged for PI just seven times. (You ask me, they just got better and smarter at hiding it.) However, what the 2014 Seahawks seemed to have done is take the aggressive, push-the-envelope mentality of their defensive backfield and spread it out all over the entire field. Now, they start early on offense, they creep into the neutral zone, they hold, they grab, they interfere and they dare the NFL to properly police them.
Unbeknownst to them, NFL officials have indirectly had a hand in Seattle’s recent rise. AP Photo/Scott EklundIn a critical Week 13 game in San Francisco, Seattle was flagged 14 times compared to just three on the 49ers. But Seattle won 19-3. On the road again in Week 16 the Seahawks crushed the 11-3 Cardinals 35-6. Seattle piled up 596 yards of offense while holding Arizona to two field goals and 29 yards rushing. Oh, yeah, they were flagged 11 times in that game, or 10 times more than the Cardinals.
“We’re playing really hard and really aggressive, so it’s kind of like last year,” said Carroll. “We were pretty good at leading the NFL last year, too, in penalties. You’ve got to be first in something, I guess, so that’s what it is.”
A lot of the Seahawks’ league-leading 144 penalties are pre-snap infractions. According to NFLPenalties.com, in 18 games they had 33 false starts, 13 defensive offsides and nine neutral zone infractions. But, again, try to clear your puritan, rule-happy mind and think of these like they do in Seattle — where they aren’t embarrassed by yellow penalty flags but emboldened.
The Seahawks have run more than 1,000 plays this season. For argument’s sake, let’s say they’ve started all of those plays on offense a micro-second early or an inch or two closer to their opponent, but only got caught 33 times. That means the Seahawks have had a jump on their opponents on 97 percent of their offensive plays. All it did was cost them 165 yards in penalties, total, or 2 percent of their total production. Of course it’s not that cut-and-dried. After all, the shame and punishment of 33 false starts caused the Seahawks to fall all the way to No. 1 in rushing.
What’s more, you and I see Seattle defensive end Michael Bennett and his numerous offside penalties and we immediately think: that fool got caught 10 times – 10 TIMES!
Whereas the Seahawks look at Bennett and think: that dude got away with a head start 250 TIMES!
Like I said, genius.
And the best part of this ground-breaking strategy is how well it works in the Super Bowl. The bigger the stage, the more important the entertainment value, the less likely refs will be to interrupt the flow of the broadcast with numerous penalties.
You’ll see.
It was Pablo Picasso who said you had to “learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.”
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