For those of you new to the site (and I hope there are many of you), here’s the gist; every week I review the penalties from the Bills game. We talk the rules, what was a big deal. What wasn’t. In Week 1, the Buffalo Bills seemed like they received a flag on just about every other play. They cleaned up things quite a bit this week against the Detroit Lions, but there were still some big goofs I bet they’d have rather had back. Let’s take a look.
And oh yeah, there’s video of some of the flags this
time seeing as I had my usual time. Extra time really.
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Counts
Last week the Buffalo Bills had ten flags that counted and 12 total. This week was five and six, so exactly half no matter how you slice it. It’s always nice when the graphs look like a staircase going up too. That means the Bills were below average and the opponent above. We’re starting off with some good signs.
In a bit of a weird league twist this week, the count went down which is normal. However, the true count (includes offset and declined) went up. That means more flags were thrown than Week 1, but less were accepted. They’ll both go down over the season I’d wager, but it’s a fun twist for this week.
Penalty Yards
Here’s why we dive deeper than most places on flags. The Bills weren’t really too far off average here on assessed yards despite the low count. The Lions had an above average count and are almost perfect on the yards. Perhaps the gap between the two teams wasn’t that large?
Making it even more complicated this week is the true yards, which add in yards negated due to penalty, looks more like what you’d originally expect. The Bills are still fine, but the Lions take a big leap up.
Penalty harm
Buffalo Bills
Last week the Bills crossed the “bad day line” of 10.0 total Harm and landed at 13.2 in my proprietary assessment scale. How did they do with half the penalties? They had 10.7 total Harm this week. It’s an improvement but much slighter than the raw count would have suggested.
I’m going to focus on three of the flags, but if you have questions on the other ones, pop into the comments and let me know. Let’s take a peek at the three.
The Landon Jackson tripping call was late in the second half and as you can see pretty justified. The Lions were already in field goal range and didn’t have time to run another play. So while this did push Detroit 13 yards closer (half the distance to the goal) and gave up a free down for a total of 2.3 Harm, the free down was irrelevant in this situation and the thirteen yards probably doesn’t lead to a missed field goal try. This is a good time to point out that Harm is a starting point for dialogue and is not intended to be an absolute grading scale on how bad a penalty hurt the team. It just identifies which ones had the highest potential for a harmful impact.
Let’s transition then to two flags that for sure did hurt the Bills. The Davison Igbinosun flag for defensive holding would appear to be five yards in most analysis. Here at Buffalo Rumblings though, we recognize that the fact it occurred on fourth down was a HUGE deal. That adds 3.0 Harm for the three downs it gave the Lions free of charge. From ended drive to first down. There’s a pretty clear penalty on this one too, so it’s hard to say this self-inflicted wound wasn’t earned.
With the drive continuing, the Bills made a couple of good plays on defense and forced a 3rd & 7. Now, if Christian Benford isn’t called for defensive pass interference there’s a very good chance the Lions are going for it anyway. But 4th & 7 at the nine-yard line sounds like better odds than 1st & goal at the one. While the Igbinosun flag was the right call, I didn’t see anything in the film that changes how I felt watching from the stadium. That ball was uncatchable.
Oh well, the Bills won but they made it harder for themselves, especially on the touchdown drive featuring the bailouts from Igbinosun and Benford.
Detroit Lions
The Lions though had an even worse day, with 16.7 Harm. Like with the Bills, I’ll focus on just a couple of these, but feel free to ask questions on any I leave out.
For the formula lovers, the Tyler Lacy face mask call is a fun one. The flag itself was assessed as 15 yards or 1.5 Harm. It also gave up a down as it occurred on second, earning another 1.0 Harm. Finally, it negated a three yard tackle for loss for 0.3 Harm or 2.8 total.
Larry Borom’s holding flag wiped out 19 yards by Jahmyr Gibbs in addition to the ten assessed yards. Luckily it was first down and didn’t cost the team anything there.
Now for the flip side of above, it wasn’t just the Bills that insisted their opponent score on a particular drive, and you could say the Lions did it even worse.
There are a few cardinal sins when it comes to flags, and one of the worst is negating a turnover. Roger McCreary did just that at the beginning of the second quarter when Buffalo was up 14 to zip. Negating a turnover is always assessed at 4.0 Harm, the number of downs/opportunities you cost your team. Even worse, McCreary’s flag came on third down. The automatic first down meant Buffalo got some free chances at a touchdown. At this point, the five yards assessed seems trivial but we count ‘em anyway.
The Lions were now in quite the pickle. They were yet to have had any good answer for Buffalo’s offense and now they handed the Bills 1st & goal at the four-yard line. Not great. Then Jack Campbell was called for defensive holding. Half the distance to the goal put Buffalo at the two-yard line, but that’s not the biggest part of the story. Detroit had just sacked Josh Allen for seven yards. First down and two to go is a whole heck of a lot different than second down with eleven to go.
Would the game’s outcome have been different without the Lions practically giving away points? Who knows really. As noted above, the Bills gifted the Lions in similar fashion. If we’re hypothesizing in one direction, it needs to go in the other which balances things out. For the short version of things though, both teams would have liked to have avoided a few flags.
