If you’re a fan of the Buffalo Bills with any longevity you know all about aggravating losses. And I’m not pulling an old-timer card here. Anyone who’s been a fan since Week 6 or before would qualify in this instance.
But this aggravating loss was especially aggravating. So it’ll come as no surprise then for you to learn that this penalty recap is only going to make things even more aggravating.
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Counts
All things considered, this looks like a pretty even matchup, with both teams slightly better than league
average in both assessed and total/true penalties. Both teams had one flag declined which I mention because it’s my philosophy that we track declined penalties because the player still did the thing. The reason it didn’t count, is because something WORSE happened to your team on the play. I present Exhibit A, the play by play line entry for the Bills’ declined flag:
(15:00) 64-D.Brunskill reported in as eligible. 1-T.Tagovailoa pass deep right to 17-J.Waddle for 38 yards, TOUCHDOWN. Penalty on BUF-31-M.Hairston, Defensive Pass Interference, declined.
Penalty yards
If that weren’t aggravating enough, check out this ****. Despite only having one more flag assessed than Miami, Buffalo had nearly twice the assessed yardage. Don’t worry, this chart only gets worse. The Bills negated 46 yards in addition to the 67 assessed, meaning that flags set the Bills back over an entire field of yardage.
The Dolphins meanwhile impacted -4 yards. Negative impacted yards is a thing that happens sometimes. In this case, check out linebacker Bradley Chubb’s defensive holding call below.
Penalty Harm
Miami Dolphins
About that holding call on Chubb, Josh Allen scrambled for five yards on 2nd & 7. Buffalo accepted the flag even though the yardage was basically the same either way so they could get the free down. So it’s not that Chubb completely got away with the flag, but the yardage on the flag didn’t matter in the slightest. Chubb’s taunting later in the game was yardage only.
If you’re doing the math in your head, if Josh Allen’s scramble of five yards was negated then Chubb’s holding call negated -5 yards. That’d be correct. Defensive tackle Benito Jones’ defensive holding flag was not only the five assessed yards, but it wiped out a tackle for loss on James Cook of one yard.
Jones’ other flag was their doozy, and one I imagine you recall. Going for it on 4th & 1, Allen channeled his inner-E.J. Manuel and got the Dolphins to flinch for five yards and three downs. For any potential new readers who have no idea where the Harm numbers come from, here’s a good one to break it down. With each yard counting as 0.1 Harm and each down counting as 1.0, the five yards and three downs add up to the 3.5 Harm you see above.
Our bad day threshold for Harm is when a team breaks 10.0 Harm or higher. The Dolphins landed at 7.1 which isn’t a bad day at all.
Buffalo Bills
Buffalo on the other hand accumulated 13.3 Harm, which isn’t crazy over the bad day barrier but still a far cry from Miami. Please recall that they had similar penalty counts. A large part of this was the negated yards alluded to above. Right tackle Spencer Brown’s holding call wiped out 15 yards on an Allen scramble, tight end Jackson Hawes negated 16 yards of a return by running back Ray Davis, and defensive end Javon Solomon erased another 15 on cornerback Maxwell Hairston’s interception return.
Seeing as how you’re already here, let’s relive a few of the key flags, but not the unnecessary roughness on safety Cole Bishop. It was a clear case of what Nathan Pyle would call “shoving after shove time is over.”
This is the unnecessary roughness call on Spencer Brown. Not the most egregious action I’ve ever seen, but I can completely see flagging this.
Take your pick on holding or illegal block in the back, they’re both good options. This is also pretty clearly a flag.
For the last one to cover, let’s go over the elements of an illegal blindside block. Traveling toward or parallel to your own end line? Check. Forceful contact? Check. Impact to the head? No. But the rule doesn’t actually need that. I’m just cleaning up a misconception. It isn’t where you hit the other guy, it’s forcible contact using helmet, shoulder, or forearm and Solomon appears to be leading with his forearm.
So there you have it. In addition to… all the other crap that happened, the Bills repeatedly made their day harder than they had to with bad penalties.
