Hold On Q&A

January 6, 2020

by Noone from Tampa

We had two questions come up from Week 17’s Hold On column. I have paraphrased the questions that were posted.

The first question is from poster Bruce, who asked, “How did Ron Rivera led teams compare to the Jay Gruden led team in term of penalties?”.

The Panthers consistently were called for less penalties in the years compared 2014-2019 as seen in this chart:

In the 2014, 2018 and 2019 seasons, the difference was as large as 28 and in 2015 to 2017 the difference was as small as 4. So, the Redskins should see improvement in this area as a result of Rivera’s more disciplined approach.

The second question is from poster Moe, who asked, “Is there a correlation between a team being behind and getting called for holding penalties?”. This next chart shows the number of passing attempts, wins, sacks, and offensive holding calls by team. The graph is sorted by the number of wins from least to most.

Without going into a lot of math, there is little statistical correlation between wins and holding calls, sacks or attempts. As you can see, the wins line steadily increases, but the other variables vary upwards and downwards fairly randomly.

As is shown on the graph, the Giants have more passing attempts than did the Redskins, but they also had less sacks and holding calls than the Redskins.  A possible reason for that is the Redskins quarterbacks may have held on to the ball longer than the Giants quarterbacks.

As always, you can hit me up with questions on Twitter @noonefromtampa or post them in the comment section below.