‘Round these parts, the head of the officiating crew for New Orleans Saints at Buffalo Bills has a special name. Yes’m and yessir! ‘Round here he’s know as Land. Effing. Clark.
Now I wanna make something crystal clear. I’m not opposed to calling out shoddy officiating (I called for Shawn Hochuli to be given the Hugo Cruz treatment after a game once). To this point, I have never accused Land. Effing. Clark of poorly officiating a game or being biased. Nosir and no’m,
Land. Effing. Clark got his name
‘round these parts because every time he calls a Bills game there’s always something just absolutely wild and kooky. In that regard, Land. Effing. Clark’s streak remains unbroken.
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Counts
This is bad. Like… BAD, bad. The league averages have remained stable but the two teams went topsy turvy. It was mentioned during the broadcast that Buffalo had been very good at avoiding flags this season while New Orleans had been very heavily penalized. Ha ha ha! Fun. The weirdness associated with a Clark game is off to a great start.
To be fair, I did point out how a clean game from Buffalo this season was the thing that felt out of whack with McDermott’s era of coaching. The Bills having a slew of flags and an occasional spike isn’t necessarily something new to us.
Penalty yards
Now this is a shock though. When you’re about 50% higher than the average amount in count, you don’t expect to be a tiny bit under in yards. They add in another 25 yards for those impacted by flag, but even that’s not crazy high considering the number of flags. The quick conclusion, which we’ll test further, is that Buffalo had a lot of flags with little overall impact. The Clark weirdness continues unabated.
Penalty Harm
New Orleans Saints
As a heads up, when flags on the Bills are voluminous, it’s not a bad idea for me to see if they’re legitimate or not since I know I’ll be asked. Cutting to the chase for the Saints, they made it very easy on Land. Effing. Clark’s crew. All four were pretty clear. To start off our quick thoughts, kicking short of the landing zone is a standard flag.
The offensive holding by Ugo Amadi negated one yard of a return in addition to the 10 yards for the flag itself. Nothing wild really, but since we’ll have more to dissect when it comes to Buffalo let’s point something out now. League wide, special teams penalties make up 16% of the total. We’re at 50% for the Saints.
Wait. Make that 75%. The roughing the kicker was the single worst individual flag in the game, which I think we all intuited watching. Assessed as 15 yards, for the Harm formula each down also counts. For negating a punt, I treat it as a turnover and assess four downs at 1.0 Harm each.
Spencer Rattler was flagged for intentional grounding and my first thought was “the ball was tipped.” I’m not sure where the idea got in my head, but I figured that you can’t tell where the ball was intended to go if a defender got a piece of it. I double checked the rules and Clark had it right of course. The quarterback has strict liability for where the ball ends up in this situation.
The New Orleans Saints wound up with 9.7 Harm total, which is pretty much right at our bad day threshold of 10.0 Harm. They didn’t have a bad day as a result of flags exactly, but it sure as heck wasn’t a good day either.
So far, Land. Effing. Clark games live up to their reputation. All of these flags were called correctly, but we have oddities in the extreme volume of special teams flags and the rarity of me having to look up a rule.
Buffalo Bills
I’m just going to start off here and confirm that the game truly had oddball occurrences. Despite having 12 flags thrown (and 11 counting), not a single down was given up. Making that even crazier is that Tre’Davious White was called for defensive holding twice. One was declined and the other occurred on a play where the Saints had already gained the first down, leading the yards to be tacked onto the dead-ball spot.
Want to hear something even wilder? If you hadn’t already looked at the chart and did some adding, the Bills’ total only hit 8.0 Harm. That’s right, despite having triple the number of flags thrown on them compared to the Saints, Buffalo was impacted by penalties LESS than New Orleans per my metric.
On to the flags themselves, there’s very little reason to dissect the formula on any Bills flag so let’s critique the other assertion about Land. Effing. Clark. Namely that when his crew throws a flag, it’s typically legitimate. They went 4/4 with the Saints, but now it’s time to discuss the home team. I’ll run through all 12, but don’t count on clips for all of them.
- Tre’Davious White’s first holding call was the right call. He was grabby as heck along a large chunk of the route.
- On White’s second defensive holding call, I don’t see it as egregious but he does tug the arm during the route. It looks like the receiver has to shift his route a bit and that’s likely plenty for the ref to see.
- On Reid Ferguson’s holding call he’s clearly grabbing. Remember that holding is “grabbing AND” a material restriction. Ferguson has hold of a defender’s hips and spins his guy to the ground, which is very clear cut.
- Take a look for yourself at the Dion Dawkins false start.
- Remember that a blindside block can happen in full view of the person being hit. The rule requires that you’re traveling toward your own end line and that you block using either helmet, elbow, forearm, or shoulder and make forcible contact with the head OR neck area of your opponent. Or put differently, Dorian Williams is guilty as heck.
- Josh Palmer’s illegal shift came as the result of him being in motion several times in rapid fire and not resetting as required by rule. Completely legitimate call.
- The holding call on Khalil Shakir was a bit of a sell job by the defender, but Shakir does tug the jersey pretty well.
- The Tyrell Shavers offensive pass interference was an interesting one. Everything is about timing and for Shavers, there’s initial contact within five yards, which likely is fine, but with the ball in the air, Shavers is grabbing jersey and there’s obvious signs he’s impeding the defender. It’s a good call, but a weird one.
- The too-many-men-on-the-field call was clearly accurate.
- Trust me when I say that Reid Ferguson bucked a bit with clear hip movement without snapping to earn his false start. But hold on a second. This was Ferguson’s second flag of the game. Coming in the game his career total was three.
- Shaq Thompson was squared up with his guy and clearly shoving the facemask up.
- Last but not least is the false start from David Edwards.
The Land. Effing. Clark experience strikes again! Completely legitimate flags. Just weird as heck.
