A Close Look: Penalties (Part 2)

A few weeks ago, as part of the offseason analysis series of posts you should check out if you're a new visitor, I took a look at the Eagles' penalty statistics.  Two findings:

• The 2008 Eagles committed the fewest penalties of any Reid-coached Eagles team.

• Roster experience seems to be a factor, although the statistical measure there was extremely crude.

Of course, there's another, perhaps more interesting question about penalties, which is why did the Eagles get hosed on so many calls this season?

I'm (somewhat) kidding, of course, but it is fair to say the perception among Eagles' fans is that we didn't get our fair share of the calls this year, especially when it comes to blatant holding penalties that, if they were ever called, would do far more to open up Trent Cole's game than even adding Julius Peppers on the other side of the line.

So the first thing I wondered about is if the Eagles actually committed fewer penalties this year, or if instead there were just fewer penalties called in their games (on both teams).  This would explain both the low number of penalties and the extent to which left tackles have to take a crowbar to Cole's face to get anything called against them.

On its face, it's an intriguing theory.  The Eagles committed only 74 penalties this year.  Their opponents were flagged for just 80.  If you look at the entirety of the league, do you see a similar relationship?

No, not really:

There's some connection there, but it's not huge.

Of course, one of the other downsides of this approach is that it doesn't tell us much about the specific penalties being called.  After all, I don't have the sense that the refs were missing many pass interference calls during Eagles games.  I do believe strongly that there were blatant holding penalties being let go, like that time Chris Samuels ran a lawnmower over Cole's foot while the tight end pinned his arms back.

Luckily, I came across a new statistics page that actually tabulates the penalties called by every crew.  It's not broken down by game, but if we look at the crews who worked the Eagles games this year and compare them to the rest of the league, can we learn anything interesting?

Here's the chart, with Eagles crews highlighted in yellow (and starred if they worked two games):

 

Three things are interesting about this chart.  The first is that Mike Carey doesn't like to hear himself talk as much as he seems to in real time.

The second is that the Eagles had five games officiated by the three flag-happiest crews in the league, yet still finished with the fourth-fewest penalties.  The league average is about 12.6 penalties a game.  The Eagles and their opponents combined for 9.6/game. 

The third is that there doesn't seem to be too much rhyme or reason to that chart, but what if instead we sort it like this:

Notice how the yellow is a little more clumped at the bottom?  If you throw out the one-off James Coleman crew, the Eagles had nine games officiated by the eight crews that skewed low in terms of holding penalties.  If you compare the crews who worked the Eagles games (doubling up for the guys who worked twice), you find that those groups typically called about 2.2 holding penalties per game.  The crews that did not work Eagles games called 2.81 holding penalties per game.  That ends up being a difference of about 10 calls a year.

Figure a couple of those might be defensive holding and you have to give at least a few to the other guys, that's still enough to explain the times Flozell Adams lassoed Cole around the neck, took his legs out, and then tied three of his appendages together.