We often hear TV personalities or analysts describe NFL teams in terms of how “disciplined” they are, and how the good teams aren't prone to committing dumb penalties. But is that true? Is there any correlation/causation between the number of penalties a team commits and their win-loss record? I've been pretty fascinated by the http://www.nflpenalties.com/ website which tracks all penalties called throughout the NFL. Using that data, not only is it clear that there is no relationship between being “disciplined” and winning … but that the teams we call “disciplined” may not be.
So far this season, on a per game basis, the four teams that are most penalty prone are: Denver (which sports a 7-3 record while committing a league-high 8.7 penalties a game); New England (8-2, with 8.4 penalties a game); then Seattle (6-4) and Buffalo (5-5) each at 8.1 penalties per game.
One of the league’s worst teams, Jacksonville (1-9), has committed the least at 4.2 penalties per game - if there’s an NFL analyst out there gushing over how “disciplined” Jacksonville is, they’re not on my TV.
Green Bay is seventh from the bottom at 5.6 a game.
If you break it down by penalty yards given up, New England (752 yards on 84 total penalties) and Denver (711 yards on 87 total penalties) again are tops in the league, compared to Jacksonville at just 331 yards on only 42 total penalties. That’s around 400 yards through 10 games that the Patriots and Broncos have given up that the Jaguars haven’t - a pretty sizable chunk of real estate (not to mention the Jags’ total penalty count is half the size).
This isn’t just an aberration, let’s go back to last year, the most-penalized teams were:
- Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks (152 total penalties, 8 per game, for 1,415 total yards given up)
- 7-9 St. Louis Rams (123 total, 7.69 per, 1,009 yards)
- 4-12 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (121 total, 7.56 per, 1136 yards
In 2012:
- 7-8-1 St. Louis Rams (129 total, 8.06 per, 973 yards)
- 8-8 Dallas Cowboys (118 total, 7.38 per, 853 yards)
- Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens (145 total, 7.25 per, 1,335 yards)
In the cases of the ‘13 Seahawks and ‘12 Ravens, the additional playoff games skew their totals a bit, but the per game averages are still very telling.
The website has data going back to the 2009 season, so if you’re curious, go check it out for yourself.
Obviously, no team tries to lead the league in penalties, and I’m not making the argument they should, but I just think it’s interesting how the media and NFL fans come up with these narratives (like “Bill Belichick demands his Patriots be the most disciplined team”) when the data simply does not back up these claims. Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of these stats, but that’s sort of my point: maybe we get too caught up in the play-to-play reaction to realize that we don’t really understand what we’re watching when it comes to judging the “discipline” of NFL teams.
