Carroll-Seahawks’ penalties: We’re not going to change

[NJSeahawk]

http://blog.seattlepi.com/football/...change-the-way-we-play/#28788103=0&28791101=0


“We’re not going to chance the way we’re playing,” Carroll told 710 ESPN’s “Brock and Salk” show on Friday. “The style of play that generates this kind of focus from the officials is somewhat emblematic of us, and I don’t want our guys to back off. What I wish would happen, I wish the game would be balanced out with our opponents being penalized equally.”

The Hawks’ penalty issues might not be that big of a problem. True, the team leads the NFL with 102 penalties called against them this season in 12 games — an average of 8.5 per contest, which ranks third in the league behind only the Denver Broncos (8.73 per game) and the New England Patriots (8.64). But after the Seahawks’ win Thursday night, those teams are a combined 25-9, which seems to illustrate Carroll’s point earlier this week that the refs tend to punish successful teams more than their opponents, something he noticed while coaching at USC.

“I think it’s interesting, fascinating,” Carroll said on Monday. “When we won the national championship the first year, the next year our opponents were penalized the least — for the next four years.”

Whether that’s because winning teams tend to play more aggressively or due to other factors, Carroll’s Seattle teams have been able to overcome the disadvantages caused by lopsided penalties. According to data from NFLPenalties.com, the Seahawks have the widest disparity between the number of flags thrown against them versus their opponents, being called for exactly twice as many infractions as the opposite side in 2014.

Got those stats from http://imgur.com/a/NkbwW

 

[kidhawk]

Carroll has been pretty steadfast in saying that we need to clean up our pre-snap penalties, but he isn't that concerned over penalties caused by players making plays.

If all our penalties were things like holding or illegal contact, etc. he'd be fine with it as he said, but he doesn't like the false start or offside type of penalties that we have had quite a few of this season.

He's also on record saying he feels the officiating has been unbalanced as far as doling out penalties in games we play.

 

[theincrediblesok]

The way we play physical is why we beat up other teams, we shouldn't change our identity just because the rules have changed. Some plays I don't mind we get a penalty if the risk is to stop a TD. Anyone have the stats between how many penalties is from our offense vs our defense. If I'm not mistaken most of our penalties is from our offense.

 

[netskier]

Would someone please provide the link or thread name of the post that contained the bar graph comparison off the hawks' vs opponents' penalties. Thanks in advance.

 

[XxXdragonXxX]

The end of that last GIF is hilarious. Lockette squares up on 92 like he's gonna punch him. Not sure if he decided fighting a guy twice his side was a bad idea, or if he realized he'd get ejected again and hurt his team, but it looked hilarious.

 

[Hawks46]

Carroll has been pretty steadfast in saying that we need to clean up our pre-snap penalties, but he isn't that concerned over penalties caused by players making plays.

If all our penalties were things like holding or illegal contact, etc. he'd be fine with it as he said, but he doesn't like the false start or offside type of penalties that we have had quite a few of this season.

He's also on record saying he feels the officiating has been unbalanced as far as doling out penalties in games we play.

This. If we cleaned up pre snap stuff, we'd be around 6 penalties per game, which with our aggressive style of pay is acceptable.

Take away 2.5 boneheaded penalties a game, and we'd probably see at least one drive extended per game. Extrapolate that out with how many games we've lost by one possession.....and I disagree that it doesn't affect you. Conjecture of course, but one really can't refute that if cleaned up penalties we'd have at least one more score this season, and most likely one more win. One more win right now........

 

[Crabhawk]

NJ, here's the link to the original content posted on /r/Seahawks on Reddit. I see a lot cross posting, but there's a pretty good discussion going on over there that deserves some attention. It's a good community, too, if any of you are so inclined.

 

[sc85sis]

This pretty well sums it up:

 

[Tokadub]

I wonder how many of those 20 Defensive Presnap Penalties are on Bennett? Seems like he's good for at least 1 per game ukeface:

I'm not too concerned about penalties if our Defense is playing like they are the last 2 games. Throughout most the season it seemed like we were trying to conform to the new rules and we looked like we were playing like a bunch of soft fairy boys YET WE STILL WERE DRAWING A TON OF PENALTIES!!!???

So it seems like they are out to get us and throw flags at us no matter what we do, if that's the case I'd much rather have us just play as hard as we can and force the refs to deal with it.

Refs aren't going to throw it every time that was a huge bluff by them this pre-season. However refs now have a lot more slack when calling penalties, they can get away with pretty much any bad calls due to the new emphasis, in essence they put themselves in better position to determine the outcome of games. We just have to hope that the Seahawks can continue to dominate like this so that the refs can't change the outcome no matter how hard they try :stirthepot:

 

[TXHawk]

If they could just clean up the dumb pre-snap penalties that would help. I've seen home games where the Hawks OL gets more false starts than the other team and there's no excuse for that.

 

[twisted_steel2]

https://twitter.com/WeightRoomShoe/stat ... 8179276800

Nicholas Shoemaker @WeightRoomShoe
The #Seahawks are now the only NFL team since 1954 to be penalized 2x as often as their opponent. Gap is on pace to be widest in NFL history

Seems fair. unno:

 

[253hawk]

So you pretty much have to go back to the end of the AFL days to find a greater disparity. Amazing.

 

[Tech Worlds]

So we are going to continue to false start, line up offsides, and commit holding calls that stall our offense.

Fantastic!

 

[KiwiHawk]

Right so Carroll has said he wants to eliminate pre-snap penalties, and your takeaway is that he wants to continue offsides and illegal formation penalties... Why does he even bother talking if people don't listen?

This is one of those times when I wonder if we actually won the Super Bowl. Because if you have a head coach whose systems just brought you your first Super Bowl in franchise history, I would think you might tend to give him the benefit of the doubt every now and again for his ability to assemble and run a football team.

 

[253hawk]

So we are going to continue to false start, line up offsides, and commit holding calls that stall our offense.

Fantastic!

And we're still averaging half a penalty per game less than last season if you count the playoffs. The problem with the disparity isn't us.

 

[Tech Worlds]

So we are going to continue to false start, line up offsides, and commit holding calls that stall our offense.

Fantastic!

And we're still averaging half a penalty per game less than last season if you count the playoffs. The problem with the disparity isn't us.

We won the superb owl last year despite the penalties. Anyone who says the penalties were OK is wrong. We got away with it. This year we haven't. It's cost us games.

Love Pete but the self inflicted penalties are something that he isn't great at getting his guys to "clean up".