.Net scoop is hitting the internet - opponents penalties

[Sac]

 

[sc85sis]

I mentioned a few weeks back--and Pete has referenced it recently--that USC had the same problem for several years. Teams suddenly received fewer penalties the week they played USC than they received in each of their other games. I've heard that Pete was told by the conference they simply had no explanation. I'm guessing he's getting the same story from the NFL.

"Gee, that does seem odd. We dunno. Sorry, deal with it."

 

[mikeak]

I agree that there had been some horrible calls and lots of no calls (especially holding)

With that said there is one possible explanation.

Seattle plays very physical football. The refs allows both teams to play more physical leading to fewer penalties by opponents (vs their average) and seattle still gets a bunch since they are more aggressive.

I would also be curious in the stats with items such as offside, false start and illegal formation removed

 

[Sac]

I just tweeted the link to Chris Wesseling.

 

[253hawk]

“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.”

Our penalties are 'fine'. We're averaging just half a penalty more per game that we did last year; half a penalty less if you include the playoffs. The huge drop-off in opponent penalties -- especially when they are playing a physical team like Seattle -- is inexplicable. The Fisher-Williams Rams (who, together in their Tennessee scumbag days set the NFL record for most penalty yards in a game) had only 2 penalties against us. A delay of game and unsportsmanlike conduct after the whistle. So in 136 plays run, they didn't commit a single penalty. Effing. Mind-blowing.

 

[Evil_Shenanigans]

[youtube]KzzBhSSaMkg[/youtube]

 

[Ruminator]

I think the refs are going to throw an extra couple of flags on the Seahawks in the next game just because of this conversation on .net.

 

[Cartire]

So I just had a this conversation with Curtis Crabtree

[tweet]https://twitter.com/Curtis_Crabtree/status/540016988005736448[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/Curtis_Crabtree/status/540019719802085377[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/Curtis_Crabtree/status/540023445367451648[/tweet]

Curtis is not impressed. I guess I see his point. While I obviously find this statistical anomaly rather curious, the conclusion can not be verified, and thus, this is just a bunch of numbers.

Call it a night boys.

 

[SalishHawkFan]

It's easy to dismiss the conclusion until you remember a few historical facts:

Vinnie Testeverde.

Baltimore.

SB XL.

Then it becomes something you have to wonder about.

Also, I went back ten years. Yep, we'd be an anomaly even then. No team has had such penalty bias in ten years.

 

[BocciHawk]

So I just had a this conversation with Curtis Crabtree

Curtis is not impressed. I guess I see his point. While I obviously find this statistical anomaly rather curious, the conclusion can not be verified, and thus, this is just a bunch of numbers.

Call it a night boys.

That's not a conversation. He really doesn't understand what the material says.

IMHO this is absolutely a smoking gun -- it's incredibly unlikely that the Seahawks would have opponents suddenly not get penalized.

I'm going to send the link over to FiveThirtyEight

http://fivethirtyeight.com/

 

[lukerguy]

Another theory is that because Seattle commits SOO many penalties (most of them warranted) perhaps, its difficult for refs not to fixate on them when they are consistently committing infractions.

All said though, the fact that the refs are calling so many less penalties against Seahawks opponents compared to the opponents' mean for the rest of the year is disconcerting to say the least.

 

[JustTheTip]

Another theory is that because Seattle commits SOO many penalties (most of them warranted) perhaps, its difficult for refs not to fixate on them when they are consistently committing infractions.

All said though, the fact that the refs are calling so many less penalties against Seahawks opponents compared to the opponents' mean for the rest of the year is disconcerting to say the least.

That would be a possible explanation if it wasn't for penalties be missed such as the PI in the endzone against KC or even more obvious the false start by the RB early in the Arizona game. No matter how much you are concentrating on one team it is impossible to miss the running back flinching so bad that he has to take a step and a half to recover.

 

[gargantual]

Remember during the game Collinsworth and the other announcer talked about it a bit and kept making the conversation about the Seahawks (ie Carroll) claiming the were getting unfairly targeted.... completely missing the point (the DRASTIC drop in opponent points), making it seem like the old, broken record of us whining about bias that we've heard since the aftermath of XL. It's still a common perception that we have a persecution complex and still need to "get over it."

My perspective on it is more that they're basically saying we need to "get back to the back of the bus." To stay in our place as it were. This persistent perception is probably going to lead to this being ignored and/or rationalized away. Stats don't lie though. Maybe we just need to keep rattling the cage, not let it be quietly swept under the rug.

We don't deserve it and Pete doesn't either, happening to his team all over again.

 

[SeaTown81]

This has been driving me mad all season. The last month or so especially.

What makes me the most mad is when it's brought up and fans or media immediately dismiss it because they are frustrated with how many pre-snap penalties the Hawks themselves commit. That is a problem, and it's own thing. But it has nothing to do with the fact that teams who play the Hawks get called for next to nothing.

Multiple games this season the Hawks opponent has gone almost the entire first half without getting a penalty called against them. With how arbitrary and ticky tack most penalties are called these days, it's inexplicable how this happens week in and week out. How exactly is it that every team the Hawks play every week is more disciplined than they normally are? The Hawks commited 14 penalties to SF's THREE this past game. I will admit that the Hawks are undisciplined and make a decent amount of dumb penalties. But they aren't 14 to 3 bad.

Give me a break.

I don't necessarily think it's the league trying to smack the Hawks down, or stomp out any sort of dominance. But there definitely is something there. Mike Pereira even admitted during a Fox broadcast that the new defensive rules were meant to combat the Hawks (which is BS and a story on its own). The league has told the refs to watch the Hawks. This on top of them already previously being a team known for drawing flags. The only sense I can make of this insane trend is that the refs are SO focused on watching the Hawks, that they forget to watch the other team. That they are so conditioned that it's Seattle that's going to be doing something, that the opposing team benefits as being superior in terms of penalties in the subconscious of the refs. It's the only reason I can come up with outside of Roger Goodell straight up saying, "Seattle being good does little good for the NFL. Put them back in their place."

And in spite of this all, they're still right in the thick of it.

Go Hawks.

 

[RiverDog]

I've looked closely at this penalty issue. Most of the penalties called on us are those of our own doing. We have a total of 102 penalties called on us and of those, 47, or 46%, are pre-snap. Compare that to New England that has nearly as many penalties as we do (99), yet they only have 25 pre snap penalties, or 25% of their total. The average differential between pre snap and total is 34%, so we are committing 38% more pre snap penalties than the average of the other teams. We lead the league in false starts, offsides, and neutral zone infractions, and are tied with 6 other teams for the most illegal formation penalties. It's an important difference if you suspect that there is an officiating bias as pre snap penalties are very easy for officials to make and do not entail the same amount of subjectivity to them as do the pass interference, offensive and defensive holding, illegal blocks, and personal fouls. In addition, Pete's teams are notoriously one of if not the highest penalized teams in football. Pete himself acknowledged that his teams at USC were also very heavily penalized, so something else is at work besides the refs when it comes to penalties called on us.

Where the rub comes is in which team benefits the least from penalties called on their opponents. We are at the bottom of the heap BY FAR when it comes to beneficiary penalties. We've only had 51 penalties called on our opponents. The Jets are a distant 2nd with 63 beneficiary penalties. The league average is 80. That's some pretty solid evidence of a bias, but I'm still not prepared to cry foul as there could be some very reasonable explanations for that discrepancy, such as, it seems that predominantly running teams draw fewer flags being a run dominated team we should not expect our opponents to draw as many flags as a team that puts the ball in the air a lot. Us, the Jets, and Dallas are the top three rushing teams and we're 29th, 31st and 32nd in drawing flags.

Even so, if I was Pete, I, too, would be planting a seed in the ref's mind, regardless if I felt there was a bias or not simply because it's an argument backed up with some pretty compelling facts. Crying like a little baby sure worked for Jim Harbaugh last year when he started whining about our DB's the week prior to our contest in SF. I think we drew two holding penalties on the first series alone, so by no means am I trying to counter the arguments made in this thread that we're getting screwed or indicating that we shouldn't be crying foul.

Here's a link I think you guys might find useful. It slices and dices a bunch of stuff about penalties and goes back 5 years so you can see certain trends. Click at the headings at the top of the column and it will sort them so you can see how various teams stack up against each other in individual categories.

http://www.nflpenalties.com/

 

[Scottemojo]

I've looked closely at this penalty issue. Most of the penalties called on us are those of our own doing. We have a total of 102 penalties called on us and of those, 47, or 46%, are pre-snap. Compare that to New England that has nearly as many penalties as we do (99), yet they only have 25 pre snap penalties, or 25% of their total. The average differential between pre snap and total is 34%, so we are committing 38% more pre snap penalties than the average of the other teams. We lead the league in false starts, offsides, and neutral zone infractions, and are tied with 6 other teams for the most illegal formation penalties. It's an important difference if you suspect that there is an officiating bias as pre snap penalties are very easy for officials to make and do not entail the same amount of subjectivity to them as do the pass interference, offensive and defensive holding, illegal blocks, and personal fouls. In addition, Pete's teams are notoriously one of if not the highest penalized teams in football. Pete himself acknowledged that his teams at USC were also very heavily penalized, so something else is at work besides the refs when it comes to penalties called on us.

Where the rub comes is in which team benefits the least from penalties called on their opponents. We are at the bottom of the heap BY FAR when it comes to beneficiary penalties. We've only had 51 penalties called on our opponents. The Jets are a distant 2nd with 63 beneficiary penalties. The league average is 80. That's some pretty solid evidence of a bias, but I'm still not prepared to cry foul as there could be some very reasonable explanations for that discrepancy, such as, it seems that predominantly running teams draw fewer flags being a run dominated team we should not expect our opponents to draw as many flags as a team that puts the ball in the air a lot. Us, the Jets, and Dallas are the top three rushing teams and we're 29th, 31st and 32nd in drawing flags.

Even so, if I was Pete, I, too, would be planting a seed in the ref's mind, regardless if I felt there was a bias or not simply because it's an argument backed up with some pretty compelling facts. Crying like a little baby sure worked for Jim Harbaugh last year when he started whining about our DB's the week prior to our contest in SF. I think we drew two holding penalties on the first series alone, so by no means am I trying to counter the arguments made in this thread that we're getting screwed or indicating that we shouldn't be crying foul.

Here's a link I think you guys might find useful. It slices and dices a bunch of stuff about penalties and goes back 5 years so you can see certain trends. Click at the headings at the top of the column and it will sort them so you can see how various teams stack up against each other in individual categories.

http://www.nflpenalties.com/

You might be missing the point.

Forget Seahawk penalties. When teams play us, they get whistled for fouls far less than when they play the other 30 teams. Playing one of the more physical teams, yet magically they are less prone to mistakes of any and all kinds when on the field with the Hawks.

San Fran has been miserable with penalties this year. They had 3. Way below their average.

 

[Tech Worlds]

I have been, and will continue to be, monitoring this situation very closely.

 

[Largent80]

Guys tweet this out, share the link, let's get this info out there.

Can't hurt. :th2thumbs:

Exactly what I was thinking......Put this OUT there. I will link it to Facebook.

 

[RiverDog]

You might be missing the point.

Forget Seahawk penalties. When teams play us, they get whistled for fouls far less than when they play the other 30 teams. Playing one of the more physical teams, yet magically they are less prone to mistakes of any and all kinds when on the field with the Hawks.

San Fran has been miserable with penalties this year. They had 3. Way below their average.

I think you might have missed my second point about the penalties. I stating that at least some of that discrepancy can be explained by the fact that heavy run teams like ours as a rule draw fewer flags, the Jets and Dallas being my examples. However, I do feel that the discrepancy is so large that it can't all be explained in this manner.

Bottom line is that I do see some truth to the argument, but perhaps not as much as some people are making it out to be.

 

[StoneCold]

In one sense the penalties called against the Hawks do matter as they contribute to the disparity between PAO and PAYO. Where it doesn't come into play is in explaining why opponents are penalized less than their average. Though it was only five teams and that is a very small sample size. Subtle whiff of smoke, could be from burnt toast.

SC