Penalty Breakdown

[Sgt Largent]

Go look through the history of the league and show me how many teams win or lose by 2+ scores week after week so as to negate or minimize any good or bad breaks from making any difference, where the amount of games played is, in terms of relevant statistical average, not even an eye blink. Nevermind how huge home field advantage is, or the one and done nature of the playoffs in this league. The difference between 8-8 and 11-5 could be 3 measly possessions.

Mostly off-topic, but yeah, this is what caused Bill Barnwell to argue that the blown call at the end of the Lions game was statistically worth about .7 wins for the Seahawks on the season.

BTW, I still stand by my 2+ scores statement. While Barnwell is correct with regard to win probability in a close game, if I get a bogus 50 yard PI call with 30 seconds left, win probability goes up for the beneficiary, but it is so low at that point as to be most often insignificant.

 

[Laloosh]

I used the 91 value or whatever Laloosh because I assumed they were not counted as an official play when our defense was flagged for a penalty, unless declined. I admittedly did not go back to verify as 4 plays on either side of that coin really changes nothing.

Fair point. Makes it 89

 

[Popeyejones]

Linking to my thread just to illustrate my response here. It goes beyond the charts. I don't think that charts explain it away. I think that watching the plays and seeing the lack of consistency in the officiating does explain a lot of what we saw however.

Here are the plays from AZ's first couple of drives where they played "penalty free" football... http://www.seahawks.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=118314

Avoiding a long post with a lot of responses to different points so I'll just respond to this one.

You've gone through the trouble of screen capping and labeling 11 total calls and no-calls that you disagree with.

All 11 of them hurt the Seahawks.

Even if we accept all these as legitimate, where are the calls and non-calls that hurt the Cardinals?

Do you 1) think that there weren't any calls or no calls that hurt the Cardinals, or 2) do you just not care about those?

If #1 you're crazy, and if #2, well, yeah, that's all I'm saying.

FWIW even if you tried to do this I think you'd struggle with doing it objectively. Heck, I know I would if I was trying to do it for the 9ers.

 

[Sgt Largent]

Linking to my thread just to illustrate my response here. It goes beyond the charts. I don't think that charts explain it away. I think that watching the plays and seeing the lack of consistency in the officiating does explain a lot of what we saw however.

Here are the plays from AZ's first couple of drives where they played "penalty free" football... http://www.seahawks.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=118314

Avoiding a long post with a lot of responses to different points so I'll just respond to this one.

You've gone through the trouble of screen capping and labeling 11 total calls and no-calls that you disagree with.

All 11 of them hurt the Seahawks.

Even if we accept all these as legitimate, where are the calls and non-calls that hurt the Cardinals?

Do you 1) think that there weren't any calls or no calls that hurt the Cardinals, or 2) do you just not care about those?

If #1 you're crazy, and if #2, well, yeah, that's all I'm saying.

FWIW even if you tried to do this I think you'd struggle with doing it objectively. Heck, I know I would if I was trying to do it for the 9ers.

GAH, POPEYE, COME ON MAN!?!? That's the point. There is something there on EVERY play. For either team. So why 13 to 3 (in play penalties) in favor of Arizona?

I mean I'm open to suggestion. Maybe the league wants to protect the QB so badly (league moneymaker) the Officials allow more in passing situations? Maybe they have a specific point of emphasis this week and we fell on the wrong side of the coin? It's not about the legitimacy of each call, it's about the disparity between teams when playing a perfectly clean game is almost an impossibility.

Whadya got, we are all listening...

 

[Laloosh]

Linking to my thread just to illustrate my response here. It goes beyond the charts. I don't think that charts explain it away. I think that watching the plays and seeing the lack of consistency in the officiating does explain a lot of what we saw however.

Here are the plays from AZ's first couple of drives where they played "penalty free" football... viewtopic.php?f=2&t=118314

Avoiding a long post with a lot of responses to different points so I'll just respond to this one.

You've gone through the trouble of screen capping and labeling 11 total calls and no-calls that you disagree with.

All 11 of them hurt the Seahawks.

Even if we accept all these as legitimate, where are the calls and non-calls that hurt the Cardinals?

Do you 1) think that there weren't any calls or no calls that hurt the Cardinals, or 2) do you just not care about those?

If #1 you're crazy, and if #2, well, yeah, that's all I'm saying.

FWIW even if you tried to do this I think you'd struggle with doing it objectively. Heck, I know I would if I was trying to do it for the 9ers.

If you see my last post in the thread, I acknowledged that there are penalties on virtually every play and acknowledged that there might be plenty of no-calls on Seattle that I didn't even bother to look for.

The point, is that they either missed the obvious (seriously, try to tell me that they didn't see those holds against the edge rushers), or they chose not to call jack shit on AZ.

You're sort of making my point for me. Rather than acknowledge that there were penalties to be called and were not, your reflex is to point out that I didn't show Seattle non-calls, bypassing what I just put in front of you.

The ref that threw the facemask flag was behind Seattle's line and Gilliam was out in front of the action blocking a LB. He could see Gilliam with a facemask that didn't cause the defender's head to turn but he couldn't see Avril and Bennett being mugged on an edge rush? C'mon, man...

 

[Sgt. Largent]

My long lost brother!

 

[Sgt Largent]

....Even if we accept all these as legitimate, where are the calls and non-calls that hurt the Cardinals?

I'm not gonna bother with the non-calls, but the calls list is SUPER SHORT. You could probably find that on your own in 3 or 4 seconds.

 

[Sgt Largent]

My long lost brother!

HA yeah...don't blow my cover, I can still blame **** I say on you. :thirishdrinkers:

 

[Popeyejones]

GAH, POPEYE, COME ON MAN!?!? That's the point. There is something there on EVERY play. For either team.

If you actually believe this then objectively you're even more critical of Laloosh's point than I was. Basically, you agree with the point I just made, and even more vociferously than I do.

If you want, I guess, but I wasn't expecting that from you.

So why 13 to 3 (in play penalties) in favor of Arizona?

I mean I'm open to suggestion.

Whadya got, we are all listening...

Yeah, sure. For things like this I think parsimony is our friend.

The most likely scenario:

Seattle committed more penalties than Arizona.

A second parsimonious albeit less likely although still very realistic scenario:

"Missed" or "blown" calls are high variance when talking about individual games, although they tend to over time fall into a normal distribution ("minus" hurts and "plus" helps). On the normal distribution this was a high variance "minus" game for the Seahawks, which is statistically expected to happen, as if it didn't there would nothing to be canceling out the high variance "plus" games for the Seahawks.

Our problem is that as fans:

1) We're prone to false positives when identifying high variance "minus" games and prone to false negatives when identifying high variance "plus" games.

2) In addition to #1, high variance "minus" games (and false positive high variance "minus" games) are stickier in our memories than high variance "plus" games (and false negative high variance "plus" games which we've forbidden from even being stickey to begin with because we never correctly identified them in the first place).

 

[Pandion Haliaetus]

Linking to my thread just to illustrate my response here. It goes beyond the charts. I don't think that charts explain it away. I think that watching the plays and seeing the lack of consistency in the officiating does explain a lot of what we saw however.

Here are the plays from AZ's first couple of drives where they played "penalty free" football... viewtopic.php?f=2&t=118314

Avoiding a long post with a lot of responses to different points so I'll just respond to this one.

You've gone through the trouble of screen capping and labeling 11 total calls and no-calls that you disagree with.

All 11 of them hurt the Seahawks.

Even if we accept all these as legitimate, where are the calls and non-calls that hurt the Cardinals?

Do you 1) think that there weren't any calls or no calls that hurt the Cardinals, or 2) do you just not care about those?

If #1 you're crazy, and if #2, well, yeah, that's all I'm saying.

FWIW even if you tried to do this I think you'd struggle with doing it objectively. Heck, I know I would if I was trying to do it for the 9ers.

Isnt this the point? Seahawks literally were called for everything that was tickytacky for the most part other than a very egregious grounding penalty that should have been safety on Wilson.

Its funny they would eat the only flag out of the bunch that looked legitamately like a real penalty. Why is that? Could it be that they didnt want the Cards to runaway with the game after the Refs pretty much stalled the Seahawks first 4 drives with two phantom penalties and two ticky tack holding penalties, both of which shouldnt have been called with the stuff Arizona was doing all game long with no holding penalties called against them.

As well the delay of game called on Seattle, that continued to back them into thier own endzone vs the 3 or 4 against the Cards that went uncalled and help the sustain drives.

You get the picture here, we wouldnt be complaining and nerding over this if both teams were getting consistent officiating.

 

[Popeyejones]

If you see my last post in the thread, I acknowledged that there are penalties on virtually every play and acknowledged that there might be plenty of no-calls on Seattle that I didn't even bother to look for.

Okay, so in that thread you argued that your exercise was either intentionally one-sided (if you just didn't bother to look for no-calls on Seattle) or pointless (if you believe there are penalties on virtually every play). So what are you disagreeing with me about then? My post that set this off essentially made the point that you're now arguing.

You're sort of making my point for me. Rather than acknowledge that there were penalties to be called and were not, your reflex is to point out that I didn't show Seattle non-calls, bypassing what I just put in front of you.

Yes, my reflex is to want to know if the game was called evenly or not, not to hunt out "evidence" in a misbegotten effort to confirm my priors.

This is precisely why I don't complain when I think the 9ers have been on the short-end of officiating sometimes. I know I'm biased, and I know that I'm prone to make a ton of mistakes and overlook a ton of things (both in the short and long term) because I'm biased.

The ref that threw the facemask flag was behind Seattle's line and Gilliam was out in front of the action blocking a LB. He could see Gilliam with a facemask that didn't cause the defender's head to turn but he couldn't see Avril and Bennett being mugged on an edge rush? C'mon, man...

Where have I ever said that I agree with this call? I remember watching it during the game. i thought it was a bad one. IIRC the announcers noted it too.

 

[Laloosh]

If you see my last post in the thread, I acknowledged that there are penalties on virtually every play and acknowledged that there might be plenty of no-calls on Seattle that I didn't even bother to look for.

Okay, so in that thread you argued that your exercise was either intentionally one-sided (if you just didn't bother to look for no-calls on Seattle) or pointless (if you believe there are penalties on virtually every play). So what are you disagreeing with me about then? My post that set this off essentially made the point that you're now arguing.

You're sort of making my point for me. Rather than acknowledge that there were penalties to be called and were not, your reflex is to point out that I didn't show Seattle non-calls, bypassing what I just put in front of you.

Yes, my reflex is to want to know if the game was called evenly or not, not to hunt out "evidence" in a misbegotten effort to confirm my priors.

This is precisely why I don't complain when I think the 9ers have been on the short-end of officiating sometimes. I know I'm biased, and I know that I'm prone to make a ton of mistakes and overlook a ton of things (both in the short and long term) because I'm biased.

The ref that threw the facemask flag was behind Seattle's line and Gilliam was out in front of the action blocking a LB. He could see Gilliam with a facemask that didn't cause the defender's head to turn but he couldn't see Avril and Bennett being mugged on an edge rush? C'mon, man...

Where have I ever said that I agree with this call? I remember watching it during the game. i thought it was a bad one. IIRC the announcers noted it too.

Do you personally think that they saw the AZ offensive line committing holding penalties on any of the occasions that I provided examples of?

 

[Popeyejones]

Do you personally think that they saw the AZ offensive line committing holding penalties on any of the occasions that I provided examples of?

Are you asking me to adjudicate your stacked deck, or to provide an opinion about if the refs were intentionally missing calls in your stacked deck?

Real question.

I'm happy to answer either way, as long as you understand that it's not something that I think is that useful or meaningful given the question I'd be interested in (if the game was evenly officiated or not).

 

[Sgt Largent]

GAH, POPEYE, COME ON MAN!?!? That's the point. There is something there on EVERY play. For either team.

If you actually believe this then objectively you're even more critical of Laloosh's point than I was. Basically, you agree with the point I just made, and even more vociferously than I do.

If you want, I guess, but I wasn't expecting that from you.

I don't know what the hell you are talking about here. Don't split this quote to look like it was said in a vacuum.

So why 13 to 3 (in play penalties) in favor of Arizona?
I mean I'm open to suggestion.
Whadya got, we are all listening...

Yeah, sure. For things like this I think parsimony is our friend.

The most likely scenario:

Seattle committed more penalties than Arizona.

Cute. Simple is as simple does huh Forrest.

u]A second parsimonious albeit less likely although still very realistic scenario: [/u]

"Missed" or "blown" calls are high variance when talking about individual games, although they tend to over time fall into a normal distribution ("minus" hurts and "plus" helps). On the normal distribution this was a high variance "minus" game for the Seahawks, which is statistically expected to happen, as if it didn't there would nothing to be canceling out the high variance "plus" games for the Seahawks.

Our problem is that as fans:

We speak to rivals of our favorite teams as Keepers of Divine Intellect, coming down from the Mount On High. See I can do it too. Nice use of parsimony friend. Instead of the definition used in psychology (simplest explanation is the best), it would be more fitting to go with cheapness, as in these cheap tactics of being willfully obtuse. Would have been more fun if you were trying to be intellectually honest in our conversations. Oh well, until next time.

1) We're prone to false positives when identifying high variance "minus" games and prone to false negatives when identifying high variance "plus" games.

2) In addition to #1, high variance "minus" games (and false positive high variance "minus" games) are stickier in our memories than high variance "plus" games (and false negative high variance "plus" games which we've forbidden from even being stickey to begin with because we never correctly identified them in the first place

).

 

[Sgt Largent]

Do you personally think that they saw the AZ offensive line committing holding penalties on any of the occasions that I provided examples of?

Are you asking me to adjudicate your stacked deck, or to provide an opinion about if the refs were intentionally missing calls in your stacked deck?

Real question.

I'm happy to answer either way, as long as you understand that it's not something that I think is that useful or meaningful given the question I'd be interested in (if the game was evenly officiated or not).

How could it ever be evenly officiated, you just educated us on the high variance we can expect week in and week out. Nobody gives a shit about 100 year trends in sports. (a bit facetious I know, been working all night, and bit punch drunk).

 

[UK_Seahawk]

Only losers complain about officiating. Winners overcome bad calls and bad breaks.

Beating one's chest and refusing to acknowledge the role terrible officiating can have on the outcome of a game is equally lame.

My post was for the OP and he knows why.

No I don't know why. Maybe you have some beef with Sgt. Largent?

I am Sgt Largent - No . Here first, post way less, easy to confuse.

No beef with him was just posting something he said on another thread here. Clearly mistaken identity on my part.

 

[Hawks46]

I'm not sure what these stats really mean. I know that I've watched many games and thought that the Seahawks got the crappy end of the stick but I've always kinda chalked it up to me being a homer.
I don't really buy into any real conspiracy theory but I have wondered if there is one.
I've always thought that if there was one, at some point in time, a disgruntled NFL employee or Referee would have outed the info. To my knowledge that has never happened.
However when the stats are laid out as above, it makes you think, Hmmmmm

I reread what I wrote, not sure why I needed to discount the possibility of a "conspiracy". I believe in nothing of the sort. Just a horrible effort on the part of the referees. I have no explanation. No secret whispers before the game about how they would job the Seahawks. Just very poorly officiated. No whys or how comes are necessary.

If one believes in the premise that penalties occur on every play, referees must make internal decisions on where that line is going to be. Penalties during the play are almost exclusively judgement calls. Specifically in the case of holding, 5 to 0 is ridiculous. Maybe Arizona is better at disguising it?

I know this game is a blatant and egregious example, but why is this so consistent with us ? How is it that our opponents consistently have less penalties than us ? How is is that we have the two highest rated 4-3 DE's in the entire league, yet we draw the least amount of offensive holding penalties ?

How is it that we have the largest disparity of penalties between us and our opponents, 2 years running now ? It's also worth noting that we aren't even close to being the most penalized team in the league this year, yet we still have the highest disparity of penalties, and our opponents also have the least amount of penalties, both 2 years running ?

Typically, I'd say that AZ was the better team. I'm hardly the most homeristic of people, and I'm very critical of my teams, yet looking at that game, I can't honestly say the best team won, and that penalties didn't play a part. They absolutely did. I'm not complaining, but my questions above are honestly curious, and good analysis is warranted.

It's hard not to be a conspiracy theorist looking at the bigger picture. The only thing is, what motive could the NFL actually have ?

The only thing I can imagine is some level of confirmation bias that all humans are subject to. Even us as we discuss this topic. The team gets a reputation for being a bully, over time it becomes an accepted norm, and their play becomes scrutinized on a level that distracts from the opponents infractions.

In discussing this particular game, as said already, could the league fear Seattle home game prime time blow outs? To get there, this would have to be discussed openly among the league office and officials and I just can't go there mentally. This would become the WWE/WWF? (no idea, "Pro" wrestling sucks) and I love this game too much to believe it. I'd have to stop watching. NO WAY.

I think we have the same thought process there. There's been theories about the Seahawks being too dominant and the league needed to slow us down for parity, but that falls flat looking at NE. They defy parity constantly and only NE fans don't get tired of always seeing them deep in the playoffs. Then NE just faced the league down. You would think they would be all over NE. We've been dealing with it for years, honestly, there's nothing you can do about bad officiating as a team.

 

[Popeyejones]

How could it ever be evenly officiated, you just educated us on the high variance we can expect week in and week out. Nobody gives a shit about 100 year trends in sports. (a bit facetious I know, been working all night, and bit punch drunk).

Even in a high variance system in a normal distribution the highest proportion of games would be evenly officiated.

So, from that we'd take away to conclusions (which are my two takeaways when watching officiating and 9ers games):

1) When in doubt, the most likely scenario is a game WAS evenly officiated, and rather than the system being biased, it is me as a fan who is biased, which is pretty obvious, as "bias" is nothing if not a requisite part of fandom. For this we apply all my talk about false positives and false negatives (which I also have to apply to myself when in doubt about officiating for 9ers games, being a fan and all).

2) When in extreme doubt, perhaps a now more likely scenario is high variance and an unevenly officiated game (or a game in which the uneven officiating happens too late for a team to adjust, or the penalties of uneven officating affect one team more than the other in a myriad of ways). For this, one basically has to accept that it is a requisite feature of a high variance system, and that in the longer term it evens out. As for why it doesn't always *feel* like it evens out, here we'd apply what I was talking about in terms of "stickiness" as well as false positives and false negatives.

Basically as I see it there are two options:

A) Accept the above

B) Resort to conspiracies

The problem with "b" is that it's an incredibly complicated way to explain an incredibly obvious and simple phenomenon of fans being biased for the teams they root for.

Most conspiracy theories are presented as simple answers that unwittingly contain wildly complex Rube Goldberg machinations beneath the surface.


Here's an example:

When rooting out conspiracies I think that penalties against a teams' opponents is a better measure than penalties against a team, as teams' actions shouldn't normalize across a season the way their opponents' do. (e.g. the Seahawks should have an above average # of penalties against them because even their fans talk about them being a talented but undisciplined team, whereas their opponents should end up average). Ideally you'd be wanting to also control for opponents' penalties in an average game versus the focal opponent, and also you'd be wanting to look at penalties per play, as each play is an "opportunity" for a penalty and that's really important. We can't do the former, without work, but someone has already done the latter.

If we take a first glance at this, we'll see the Seahawks have the least penalties per play called against their opponents in the NFL. Hey! We might have evidence of a conspiracy.

We have two problems with our conspiracy though:

1) The Seahawks are tied for last for opponents penalties called when playing them with Carolina and Atlanta, so our conspiracy has to include why the NFL is trying to keep down ALL three of these teams, not just our focal team. Likewise for our conspiracy to make sense we should also try to explain why the league is trying to prop up Arizona, Indianapolis, and Miami.

2) Our second problem is that if this is a conspiracy against Carolina, Atlanta and Seattle and for Arizona, Indianapolis, and Miami, it's a really crappily enacted conspiracy, as across all the teams, as we'd expect in a non-conspiratorial system, a shockingly normal distribution is maintained, and the variance in it is incredibly low.

In fact, there are 15 teams (almost perfectly half of the NFL) for which their opponents are penalized between 5 and 6 times per game. That includes Seattle, Atlanta and Carolina whose opponents are penalized on .04% of plays, and Oakland, Detroit, San Francisco, the Jets, Denver, Tampa Bay, Green Bay, New Orleans, Baltimore, Kansas City, Chicago, and Dallas whose opponents are penalized on .05% of plays.


To wrap up, if this is a conspiracy we have to explain why 1) it's a conspiracy against Seattle, Carolina, and Atlanta and a conspiracy for Arizona, Indianapolis, and Miami and 2) why it's such a remarkably ineffective conspiracy in influencing outcomes that's also so perfectly hidden by looking exactly like what we'd expect from random chance?


El fin. :lol:

 

[Sgt Largent]

How could it ever be evenly officiated, you just educated us on the high variance we can expect week in and week out. Nobody gives a shit about 100 year trends in sports. (a bit facetious I know, been working all night, and bit punch drunk).

Even in a high variance system in a normal distribution the highest proportion of games would be evenly officiated.

So, from that we'd take away to conclusions (which are my two takeaways when watching officiating and 9ers games):

1) When in doubt, the most likely scenario is a game WAS evenly officiated, and rather than the system being biased, it is me as a fan who is biased, which is pretty obvious, as "bias" is nothing if not a requisite part of fandom. For this we apply all my talk about false positives and false negatives (which I also have to apply to myself when in doubt about officiating for 9ers games, being a fan and all).

2) When in extreme doubt, perhaps a now more likely scenario is high variance and an unevenly officiated game (or a game in which the uneven officiating happens too late for a team to adjust, or the penalties of uneven officating affect one team more than the other in a myriad of ways). For this, one basically has to accept that it is a requisite feature of a high variance system, and that in the longer term it evens out. As for why it doesn't always *feel* like it evens out, here we'd apply what I was talking about in terms of "stickiness" as well as false positives and false negatives.

Basically as I see it there are two options:

A) Accept the above

B) Resort to conspiracies

The problem with "b" is that it's an incredibly complicated way to explain an incredibly obvious and simple phenomenon of fans being biased for the teams they root for.

Most conspiracy theories are presented as simple answers that unwittingly contain wildly complex Rube Goldberg machinations beneath the surface.


Here's an example:

When rooting out conspiracies I think that penalties against a teams' opponents is a better measure than penalties against a team, as teams' actions shouldn't normalize across a season the way their opponents' do. (e.g. the Seahawks should have an above average # of penalties against them because even their fans talk about them being a talented but undisciplined team, whereas their opponents should end up average). Ideally you'd be wanting to also control for opponents' penalties in an average game versus the focal opponent, and also you'd be wanting to look at penalties per play, as each play is an "opportunity" for a penalty and that's really important. We can't do the former, without work, but someone has already done the latter.

If we take a first glance at this, we'll see the Seahawks have the least penalties per play called against their opponents in the NFL. Hey! We might have evidence of a conspiracy.

We have two problems with our conspiracy though:

1) The Seahawks are tied for last for opponents penalties called when playing them with Carolina and Atlanta, so our conspiracy has to include why the NFL is trying to keep down ALL three of these teams, not just our focal team. Likewise for our conspiracy to make sense we should also try to explain why the league is trying to prop up Arizona, Indianapolis, and Miami.

2) Our second problem is that if this is a conspiracy against Carolina, Atlanta and Seattle and for Arizona, Indianapolis, and Miami, it's a really crappily enacted conspiracy, as across all the teams, as we'd expect in a non-conspiratorial system, a shockingly normal distribution is maintained, and the variance in it is incredibly low.

In fact, there are 15 teams (almost perfectly half of the NFL) for which their opponents are penalized between 5 and 6 times per game. That includes Seattle, Atlanta and Carolina whose opponents are penalized on .04% of plays, and Oakland, Detroit, San Francisco, the Jets, Denver, Tampa Bay, Green Bay, New Orleans, Baltimore, Kansas City, Chicago, and Dallas whose opponents are penalized on .05% of plays.


To wrap up, if this is a conspiracy we have to explain why 1) it's a conspiracy against Seattle, Carolina, and Atlanta and a conspiracy for Arizona, Indianapolis, and Miami and 2) why it's such a remarkably ineffective conspiracy in influencing outcomes that's also so perfectly hidden by looking exactly like what we'd expect from random chance?


El fin. :lol:

Not sure why you quoted me and then went off about proving a conspiracy. I even flatly deny I believe there is any possibility of a conspiracy earlier in the thread, or I'd just simply quit watching. Not a fan of wrastlin. Maybe you are so hopped up on being a counterpoint (read: contrarian) for every topic you rampage through on this board, you just mind meld all Seahawks fans into one big lump.

Your work is done though, thread thoroughly derailed, nice work.

:34853_doh:

 

[RichNhansom]

You know the funny thing to me is reading the webzone were Popeye posts regularly, I have never seen him make any attempt to correct his brethren when they claim they were jobbed by the officials and they complain about officiating more than any fan base I have ever followed.

Another thing you don't see over there when complaining about how bad the officials kill them is any statistical data backing up their beliefs. The only visual data I can remember is the roughing the passer on Brees that possibly cost them a game but even in their own videos of the play/penalty you can't deny all the ingredients of the rule were in place.

Pretty amazing to me how much effort Popeye is putting in here now considering his lack of effort with his own fan base. Keep in mind his fan base is the one that claims we get away with murder on every play while ignoring the statistical penalty dispersion for us and our opponents. The very same fan base that likes to call us cheaters while ignoring on two separate occasions they have been docked draft picks for cheating. Yeah cheating.

I seems pretty obvious to me Popeye is just simply trolling because he has had many opportunities to have this conversation with his own fan base but for some reason it apparently wasn't important enough.