The Buffalo Bills hosted the New York Jets for the last regular-season game ever at old Highmark Stadium, and likely the last game ever. A bunch of flags flying would have marred the celebration, and as I
anticipated the officiating crew played along and kept their flags in check.
Interestingly, while low in volume the flags were characteristic of the two teams’ energy levels. The Jets’ flags reflected a team that had no interest in playing football at any level, let alone a professional one. Amped up in red helmets and looking to give fans one last hurrah, the flags for the Bills reflect a team that chose violence over their division rivals.
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Counts
The league average has steadily fallen all year, with the gray bars showing the lowest averages so far in the 2025 season. Despite the low bar set by the league in Week 18, the Bills and Jets went even lower. This game just did not feature a ton of flags.
Penalty Yards
As you’d expect, the yards follow suit. In the usual measure of assessed yards, the Jets and Bills were nearly perfectly even. When you add in yards impacted by flags though, the Bills nearly double while the Jets stand pat. That’s your first clue on the relative severity of the thrown flags and how it might reflect team personality this week.
Penalty Harm
New York Jets
As I mentioned above, these flags are indicative of a team that simply did not give a **** to be on the field. The first flag of the game was for too many men on the field on offense.
You might have noticed for the purposes of the graphs over the years, I tend to abbreviate flag names. That’s not really for the graphs, it’s for my data. Do you know how many times I’d have had to type “offensive holding” this year if I spelled it all out? The answer is 43. Factor in other common flags like “false start” and you can see why I type in shorthand. So if you see one completely typed out, that means it’s so rare I don’t see ANY use whatsoever in a shortcut.
Offensive too many men on the field? Really? That was the eighth flag of that type this year. Eight. Of 3,467. Do you know that scene in Willy Wonka where the math teacher asks Charlie how many bars of chocolate he opened trying to get a Golden Ticket and the number is so low the math teacher gives up on calculating the percentage? This is the penalty equivalent to that.
False starts are pretty much always an unfocused penalty so that needs very little explanation. Sometimes a team will get a delay of game on purpose to give their punter a strategic advantage, and the Jets’ delay came on a punt. The idea is that if you’re around midfield, the extra five yards of space can help prevent a touchback.
The Jets were back on their own 12-yard line. This was not that. I feel like they legitimately just had no interest in the play clock, or time as a function of their existence.
The only flag of consequence was the facemask and of all the 15-yard flags there is, face mask is the laziest. It’s not a player taunting, or tackling with extra force, or a late hit. It’s the accidental 15-yarder. This one didn’t even get the full 15. The Bills were already too close to the end zone for that and it was a 12-yarder. It did give up two free downs for 3.2 total Harm and most of the Jets’ total of 4.7 Harm for the day, but there’s no indication of effort in this or any flag.
Buffalo Bills
The Bills on the other hand showed a little more oomph with their flags. Let’s go through them one by one. But first, let’s take a look at the three flags that led to an 8.9 Harm day.
I can already see a comment telling me the Sedrick Van Pran-Granger flag is nothing more than a pancake. It’s not. A pancake is when you’re face-to-face and the punch/pop is forceful enough to get a knockdown. Van Pran-Granger was holding on, not popping and the takedown occured from the side. The hold was completely unnecessary as Ray Davis was already past the threat of a tackle.
I want to be clear that I don’t think this is dirty, it’s a player giving his all and making a mistake. If it were a close game this could have been costly. If.
On the unsportsmanlike conduct flag for A.J. Epenesa, they didn’t show it on the replay for me to get a clip, but this is another going-for-the-kill-mentality flag. The Bills had stopped the Jets on 4th & very short and should have been celebrating. However, when you’re up 21-0 you don’t need to go overboard. The Bills kept the ball so no real harm done, but once again you see the mentality here.
Finally, the headbutt from T.J. Sanders is as clear as it gets for a flag. I want to lay out the situation here. Buffalo was up 35-0 with about eight minutes left in the game. The Jets hadn’t really been doing anything to aggravate the Bills. There were a couple points where things weren’t friendly exactly, but nothing to generate this animosity.
Except for perhaps the desire to earn a shutout. Buffalo worked hard to give us fans an ending to remember, and that meant going for the kill over and over again. Thank you Bills!
