Hold On: Week 2 Edition
September 22, 2019
By Noone From Tampa
This is part 2 of my new ongoing series on penalties in the NFL. As I mentioned, I’m going to write something new for you every week on this topic that hopefully brings you some insight as to the effect of penalties on a team’s performance, particularly the Washington Redskins.
The first chart below shows the number of penalties by team, both before and against and the net difference through week 2. The numbers are only penalties called and do not take into account whether they are declined or not. The Redskins ranked 8th in penalties called against them, tied with Seattle and New Orleans. The most penalized team through week 2 is the Cleveland Browns. Take a look at the data in graph form:
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, and the yellow line represents the net difference between the two.
The Redskins are tied for 5th worst in net difference in penalties. So, the Redskins are making more mistakes than their opponents, but that is to be expected from a team with an 0-2 record.
The Redskins rank in the top 10 (meaning, most penalties called) in two key indicators for penalties which you don’t want to see if you want to be a successful football team. Let’s look at what types of penalties are being called on the Redskins and their opponents.
What jumps out from this graphic is how much more the Redskins get called for offensive holding than their opponents. That’s 67% more through the first two weeks. Another item the offense needs to work on eliminating is the false start penalties. That should be an easy fix for any professional team.
Lastly, which players are getting the penalty calls?
If you had guessed that the primary culprits are on the offensive line, you’d be right. Chase Roullier is the only offensive lineman who has not been tagged with a penalty call.
The defense and special team units have been called for 4 penalties each while the offense has gotten 14 calls.
The coaching staff needs to do a better job getting the players to not make so many mistakes on offense. Jacksonville leads the league in offensive holding calls with 12 (10 accepted, 2 declined) the Redskins are second with 10 calls (8 accepted, 2 declined). Through week 2, 3 of the offense holding calls resulted in drives being stalled. If the team wants to turn things around, eliminating penalties especially the ones that kill drives, should be a focus.
I’ll be back next week with an analysis of week three.
Data Sources: nflpenalties.com, nfl.com