My NFL Penalty Watch

Brian Tuohy is doing, on his site, a selection of teams on an NFL penalty watch, profiling offensive holding and overall penalty numbers. In one way, he is showing how the league appears to be favoring the Green Bay Packers by showing how they almost never get called for what John Madden would always call something which "happens on every play".

Be that as it is, I wanted to take it a step further. Using published play-by-play reports, I have been compiling a Fair Play Table all year (and the penalty numbers will probably not be exactly right -- as it appears some games might not be consistently kept track with all the penalties, but this is the best I could find from sources like ESPN.com and NFL.com and the like).

On my Penalty Watch, a team gets one (penalty) point (less is better) for any pass interference or 15-yard penalty. They get one extra point for each penalty over ten in a game. The team gets three such points if any player is expelled from a contest for something on the field.

(If a team SHOULD HAVE had someone tossed from a game, I put that in a different column.)

So, pulling up my table, here are the ten most-such penalized teams:

Oakland, no surprise, leads with 56 such points.
The Lions, Seahawks, and Cardinals have 38. As you can see, it's not close.
Tampa Bay has 37.
San Francisco has 32.
Chicago has 30.
Carolina has 29.
Denver has 28.
Five teams are tied for tenth with 27. (Steelers, Dolphins, Chargers, Chiefs, and Titans)

The five least-such penalized teams:

The Giants, Vikings, and Falcons have 18 such points. (The Packers, who led this category for a significant part of the year, have picked up several points Thanksgiving and since -- remember that an ejection costs three.)
The Rams have 17.

The cleanest team, in such penalties, in the league? The only team not to have one fine through 13 weeks. They also have no wins, either: The Indianapolis Colts, with 15.

So then I go to ESPN.com and to their NFL statistics portion of the site and sort for penalties "offense" -- this is penalties committed...

The most-penalized teams in the league?

5. Dallas, with 99 penalties
4. Detroit with 105.
3. Tampa Bay with 108.
2. Seattle with 119.
1. Oakland, and it's not close with 130.

The five least-penalized teams?

5. Miami with 69.
3-4 (tied). Green Bay and Jacksonville with 65
2. Indianapolis with 64
and the least penalized team in the NFL this season is Buffalo with 62.

Then I found an interesting stat on the "defense" page -- this is the number of penalties called against the other team.

The five teams with the least penalties called for them?

5. Philadelphia with 74
3-4 (tied). Houston and Dallas with 71
2. Buffalo with 69.
The team with the least amount of penalties committed against them is Indianapolis with 65.

The six with the most penalties called for them?

5-6 (tied). New England and Jacksonville with 97.
4. Green Bay with 98.
3. Arizona with 100.
2. Detroit with 102.
And the team with the most penalties committed against them is Washington with 103.

So, the natural thing would be to examine the penalty ratio. (Same +/- as turnovers, + meaning they have more penalties committed against than they commit.)

And here's what we come up with:

The team with the best differential is, in fact, Green Bay with a +33.
2. Jacksonville with +32.
3. Washington +28
4. New England +23
5. Miami +21

The five worst?

5-6(tie). San Francisco and Carolina with -18.
4. Tampa Bay with -26.
3. Dallas -28.
2. Oakland -38.
1. Seattle -43

Interesting factoid: Denver is still -11 in the Tebow Era, according to Brian Tuohy's site.