Hold On – 2020 Season Recap
January 13, 2021
By Noonefromtampa
The 2020 regular season is in the books. The Washington Football Team made the playoffs but lost in a hard-fought content to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. So, let’s take a look at how WFT stacked up against the rest of the league.
For the regular season, rankings from worst to best, Washington ranked 16th in the number of calls accepted with 87 and 21st in yardage penalized with 697 yards. In 2019, 106 calls accepted for 835 yards. That’s an 18% reduction calls and a 16.5% reduction in yards penalized. This speaks to the playing with greater discipline emphasized by Coach Ron Rivera. Another view is this: while the average team across the season had 5.6 accepted calls per game, the worst team, the Arizona Cardinals, had 7.1 accepted calls per game, and the best team, the New England Patriots, had 3.9 accepted calls per game. In contrast, Washington had 5.3 accepted calls per game.
The ten most penalized teams in 2020 were:
| Team | Calls Accepted |
| Arizona Cardinals | 113 |
| Jacksonville Jaguars | 107 |
| Philadelphia Eagles | 107 |
| Kansas City Chiefs* | 105 |
| Baltimore Ravens | 104 |
| Buffalo Bills* | 102 |
| New York Jets | 101 |
| Cleveland Browns* | 100 |
| New Orleans Saints* | 98 |
| Las Vegas Raiders | 98 |
* = playoff team
The ten worst teams in 2020 by yards penalized were:
| Team | Yardage |
| Jacksonville Jaguars | 1071 |
| New Orleans Saints | 1005 |
| Baltimore Ravens* | 961 |
| New York Jets | 952 |
| Buffalo Bills* | 941 |
| Kansas City Chiefs* | 919 |
| Indianapolis Colts* | 899 |
| Cleveland Browns* | 870 |
| Arizona Cardinals | 868 |
| Detroit Lions | 860 |
* = playoff team
In 2020, some of the most frequently called penalties called on Washington were:
- False Start – 13 accepted calls
- Offensive Holding – 12 accepted calls
- Defensive Offside – 9 accepted calls
- Delay of Game – 7 accepted calls
- Defensive Pass Interference – 6 accepted calls
Now let’s look at how the rest of the league fared with these calls:
- Seven teams had 20 or more false starts with the Cardinals leading with 32
- Nine teams had more offensive holding calls with the 49er’s leading with 20
- Only one team had more offside calls, the Packers with 10
- Only one more team had more delay of game calls, the Texans with 8
- 17 teams had 10 more defensive pass interference calls, with the Saints leading with 19
The biggest area of improvement by Washington in terms of penalties in my opinion is the defense “offsides”, which had a total of 18 calls covering offsides, neutral zone infractions and encroachment. That’s 90 yards of free real estate for the offense for what are basically mental mistakes by the players.
Individually, Montez Sweat was tied for 2nd in the league for most penalties by a player with 10, along with Patrick Peterson (Cardinals) and Donovan Smith (Buccaneers). The most penalized player in the 2020 season was Jedrick Wills of the Browns with eight false starts and three offensive holding calls. Sweat’s penalties were offside (4), neutral zone infraction (3), roughing the passer (2) and horse collar tackle (1). Therefore, Sweat accounted for 38% of the “offsides” mistakes; he needs to get better at that next season.
Sources: nfl.com and footballdb.com