Hold On – 2024 Season Wrap-up

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January 31, 2025

By Noonefromtampa

Another season is in the books, and what a great season it was. The Commanders beat all expectations and ended up in the NFC Championship game. The team has plenty of room for improvement, though.

Key Penalty Trends

In the 18 regular season games, comparing the top 10 Commanders penalties from 2024 versus the same penalties in 2023, the counts are:

Penalty 2024 2023
Offensive Holding 21 13
False Start 19 20
Defensive Pass Interference 19 7
Roughing the Passer 6 6
Ineligible Downfield Pass 5 2
Defensive Offside 5 1
Illegal Formation 4 2
Neutral Zone Infraction 4 4
Defensive Holding 3 4
Face Mask 2 3

Three things stand out here: the team needs to improve on reducing offensive holding, defensive pass interference and defensive offsides. The first two are technique/performance issues while the last one is a mental focus issue.

Overall, the Commanders lead the league in per game defensive pass interference penalties. The will likely be addressed by improving the quality of players in secondary next season, i.e., finding people who better fit the schemes that Joe Whitt Jr. is using. Two players in the secondary, Noah Igbinoghene and Benjamin St-Juste, accounted for 16 penalties and both are free agents.

League Trends

There were 3,506 penalties called in the 2024 regular season versus 3,117 in 2023.  That is a 12.5% increase over the prior year. The biggest culprits in the increase were:

Penalty 2024 2023 % Increase
False Start 704 640 10%
Offensive Holding 703 578 21.6%
Defensive Pass Interference 315 278 13.3%

The 2024 numbers do not include the Super Bowl game, so totals will likely go up some more.

Offensive holding and defensive pass interference are two of the more subjective penalty calls that officials can make and often have game changing implications. These penalties are also not reviewable by replay which prevents bad calls from being overturned.

The primary tools for determining penalties and spotting the ball at the end of play is what is called in military slang the “Mark One Eyeball”. Every play is visually evaluated by the officiating crew on the field and since officials are human the results between crews can be very different. Top that off with the fact that humans, no matter how well trained, can make mistakes, especially with the speed of the game now.

Also, someone in the league office really needs to explain why in this technologically advanced age ball spotting and determining measurements cannot be improved upon with use of technology. One can only assume that the reason is that the cost of new technology and training us money that would come from the owners’ pockets, thereby decreasing their profits. This may be a short-sighted point of view considering how the league is working on increasing revenues.

The biggest new source of additional revenue from the NFL is gambling. The league is opening itself up to increased focus and negative publicity from officiating miscues. Just look at the recent Chiefs-Bills game for the impact from a missed ball placement in determining the outcome of the game. No fan wants to lose money from a mistake that was preventable.

For some examples of officiating miscues, there are a few good examples in this thread on X:

Sources: nflpenalties.com

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