Hold On, Week 16 Edition
December 26, 2019
By Noone From Tampa
This is part 16 of my ongoing series on penalties in the NFL.
We saw another good game from Redskins quarterback Dwayne Haskins, who showed marked improvement over his earlier starts. Unfortunately, he will miss the final game against the Cowboys due to an ankle injury. The worst part of the Giants game was how badly the defense played. Between the decimated secondary and lack of a pass rush, Daniel Jones had all day to throw and nobody was able to tackle Saquon Barkley.
For those fans rooting for draft position, the Redskins have all but locked up the second pick in the draft. The only way to move out of second is for the Redskins to beat the Cowboys and every other team (Lions, Dolphins and Giants) to lose. The Redskins would move back to as far as fifth, depending on how the strength of schedule tie-breaker ends up.
The penalty highlight for this week was the illegal forward pass made by Case Keenum, where he went beyond the line of scrimmage, then circled back behind it and then threw the ball. That was only the 8th time that was called this season across the entire league.
The Redskins had seven penalties called this week with six accepted while the Giants had five penalties with four accepted. The Redskins still rank in the top 5 in net difference of penalties accepted but not in any of the other three categories.
The league-wide rankings through week 16 are as follows:
|
Rank |
Total Penalties Called | Total Penalties Accepted |
Net Difference |
Net Yards Difference |
| 1 | Jacksonville | Jacksonville | Oakland | New Orleans |
| 2 | Cleveland | Tampa Bay | Jacksonville | Oakland |
| 3 | Tampa Bay | Cleveland | New Orleans | Jacksonville |
| 4 | New Orleans | Oakland | Buffalo Washington | Cleveland |
| 5 | Oakland | New Orleans | New York Jets |
New Orleans and Buffalo are the only playoff teams in the top 5 rankings this week.
Through sixteen weeks, the Redskins have 127 total calls with 104 accepted while their opponent have 99 total penalties calls with 84 accepted, resulting in a net difference of -20. The Redskins have -101 net yardage difference, which is 9th in the league.
The league chart below shows the number of penalties by team, both before and against and the net difference through week 16:
The green part of the bar graph is the number of penalties against that team, the blue part shows number of penalties called against the opponent, the yellow line represents the net difference between the two, and the dark green line is the number of wins.
Across the NFL, a penalty is called every 10.8 plays and each game has 16.4 flags thrown in it.
The next graph is the overall league penalty call distribution across the league through 16 weeks for penalties that have 1% or greater of the total calls:
The most common penalty is still offensive holding which is called 1.65 times more than the next most frequent one, false start.
The top 10 penalties in the NFL and the percentage of overall penalties called are:
| Penalty | % of Calls |
| Offensive Holding | 22.0% |
| False Start | 13.3% |
| Defensive Holding | 8.2% |
| Defensive Pass Interference | 7.4% |
| Defensive Offside | 5.3% |
| Illegal Block Above the Waist | 4.2% |
| Unnecessary Roughness | 4.0% |
| Illegal Use of Hands | 3.7% |
| Neutral Zone Infraction | 3.7% |
| Roughing the Passer | 3.4% |
Next, let’s look at what types of penalties are being called on the Redskins and their opponents.
The net difference on holding calls is now at -4 calls, with the Redskins having 37 and their opponents having 33. This week, there was one offensive holding penalty, which was called on Ereck Flowers, but the penalty was actually on Donald Penn, yet another example of the officials making a mistake in a game.
This next chart shows which Redskins players are getting the penalty calls:
The graph has been filtered for players committing more than one penalty. The Redskins’ penalty leaders this week are Morgan Moses, Donald Penn, Brandon Scherff, Jimmy Moreland, and Jeremy Sprinkle. There was one false start penalty again this week, committed by Donald Penn.
Looking at calls by unit, the offense gets over 50% of the penalty calls:
This week I want to take an in-depth look at the offensive line and how it ranks against the rest of the league in penalties. This graph shows the total number of calls committed by a team’s offensive line through week 16:
The Redskins rank 5th for most committed penalties by an offensive line, eight calls above the league average. This is a key indicator of the offensive struggles the Redskins incurred during this season. Penalties often put an offense in a disadvantageous down and distance situation. When a team starts with a first and 20 or second and 20, the ability to convert a first down drops dramatically. The next chart shows how the penalty calls break down across the Redskins offensive line:
Upcoming game: Dallas Cowboys who average 7.7 penalties a game with 6.6 accepted, versus the Redskins 8.5 penalties called and 6.9 accepted.
I’ll be back next week with an analysis of the league stats after week 17.
Data Sources: nflpenalties.com, nfl.com