[The guys on the 710 postgame show mentioned something like this.]
According to http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/penalties-per-game [*], the eight most-penalized teams in 2012 were:
St. Louis
Baltimore
Dallas
Cleveland
Washington
Oakland
SF
Seattle
(St. Louis was the most-penalized, Baltimore the second-most, and so on. The 'Hawks were eighth.)
Four of those eight teams made the playoffs; three of them made it past the first round, and two of them made it to the Super Bowl. Not a bad bunch.
Although I hated watching tonight's flag-fest, it does make for an interesting conversation piece: is being a heavily-penalized team really that much of a penalty, so to speak? From what I can tell, our team is built to break the other team's will on both offense and defense, and maybe the penalties are just part and parcel of that approach.
For reference, the least-penalized team last year was Atlanta -- a team built very much in the mold of the 05 'Hawks.
* Someone please tell me if this site isn't legit. I'm not an NFL research maven.
According to http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/penalties-per-game [*], the eight most-penalized teams in 2012 were:
St. Louis
Baltimore
Dallas
Cleveland
Washington
Oakland
SF
Seattle
(St. Louis was the most-penalized, Baltimore the second-most, and so on. The 'Hawks were eighth.)
Four of those eight teams made the playoffs; three of them made it past the first round, and two of them made it to the Super Bowl. Not a bad bunch.
Although I hated watching tonight's flag-fest, it does make for an interesting conversation piece: is being a heavily-penalized team really that much of a penalty, so to speak? From what I can tell, our team is built to break the other team's will on both offense and defense, and maybe the penalties are just part and parcel of that approach.
For reference, the least-penalized team last year was Atlanta -- a team built very much in the mold of the 05 'Hawks.
* Someone please tell me if this site isn't legit. I'm not an NFL research maven.
