As plentiful as they are now in the NFL, penalties make up the matted hair that clogs the drain of football.
They are the spinning circle of a buffering cat video.
Mothers, bouncers, too many penalties – all expert at ruining a perfectly good time.
Nobody likes penalties. They tend to slow the flow of a game to a tortuous drip. They are the destroyer of drives and a sure cure for the excitement of professional football. And, yet, here we are, upon further review, in a golden age of the yellow flag.
When Tom Brady tweets out that he just turned off an NFL game because of too many “ridiculous” penalties something isn’t working. (It was a Thursday night Jacksonville-Tennessee game, in which there were 19 penalties, 10 for offensive holding. And because it was Brady, of course the NFL turned a corporate ankle in its haste to try to appease him, last weekend ordering its officials to ease up on the holding calls. Thanks, Tom.)
Think of the poor broadcaster who must paint vivid word portraits of the action, only to spot the flag and to be forced to report: “Never mind.”
“You get to a point where you describe a play then you immediately look behind the play to see if there’s any laundry laying around where there was a penalty where what you’re talking about didn’t actually count,” said Dave Archer, former Falcons quarterback and analyst on the team’s radio broadcast.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve described a play, hey this was a good play, but it wasn’t because it had to come back. It’s aggravating because there are a lot of good plays that come back, and it disrupts our flow to get into the game as well.”
“The penalty thing has become epidemic in the NFL. Penalties are up all over the league,” Archer noted.
According to NFLpenalties.com – yes, penalties have a web site – there has been an average of 18.48 flags thrown per game through the first three weeks of the season. That’s up from an average of 15.61 per game last year. And nearly five more a game than just 10 years ago.
That number may, well, flag over the longer course of the season. These things tend to seek their own level. Example: In the two weeks before Brady’s tweet, there was an average of 5.7 holding calls per game. Afterward, that number plummeted to 2.9 per game last week. That underscores the maddeningly subjective nature of officiating this game.
You wonder if players even know what constitutes a flag-worthy foul with a rule book that is a living, breathing, ever-changing document. In other words, how can they know what they can get away with, and what they can’t?
“It’s an evolution,” center Alex Mack said.
“There are points of emphasis every year – preseason (the calls for that highlighted infraction) are really heavy. Early in the season everyone kinds of figures it out. Then it kind of disappears.”
Offensive holding was exactly that point of emphasis to start this season, Mack noting that linemen were getting called when their hands went wide, giving the look of holding even if it gave the lineman no clear advantage. “Even if it’s not impeding movement to another guy, they don’t like any type of around-the-shoulder kind of look,” he said.
All this penalty talk brings us, sadly, to Mack’s team, the Falcons. They find themselves uncomfortably on the front lines of this issue. In last week’s game in Indianapolis the Falcons were assessed 16 penalties (another was declined) – one short of a franchise record. Little surprise, then, that they stand second in the NFL in total penalties (37 to Cleveland’s 46).
How ’bout that first possession last week in Indy? The Falcons were third-and-5 on the Colts 36-yard line and during a 2-yard gain that left them in potential field-goal range, guard James Carpenter was called for holding. Moved back 10 yards, the Falcons were forced to punt after a third-down incompletion.
Or the second-quarter call against the Falcons defense for too many men on the field that gave the Colts a fresh set of downs deep in Falcons territory? Indy eventually put the ball in the end zone.
Or what about that fourth-quarter Falcons touchdown drive in which the offense had to overcome four penalties on itself, making a long drive much longer and far more heroic than necessary? “Obviously,” said quarterback Matt Ryan, “nobody wants to commit these penalties. You let the guys know they made a mistake and move on from it. It’s about what we do the next play.”
More than an irritation, penalties became the dominant theme of a painful loss.
Granted, the total also included perhaps the most wrong-headed call of the season, when Falcons safety Keanu Neal threw his helmet in frustration after tearing his Achilles and was called for unsportsmanlike conduct. “I would hope in those cases they would use common sense and pick up the flag,” Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. It wasn’t picked up. There is plenty of blame to go around, both to the flaggers as well as the flagees.
What’s the remedy for yellow flag fever? What are the Falcons to do in order to quit acting as the drum major in this parade of penalties?
Personal accountability is a good place to start.
“Me, I’m the first one (to blame),” safety Ricardo Allen said, whose unnecessary roughness penalty was one of eight defensive calls against the Falcons in Indy. “I have to find a way to change my angles. Have to find a way to drop a little lower.”
But, and here Allen demonstrates the difficulty in walking the line between necessary aggression and unnecessary roughness when he adds: “One thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to change the way I play, the physical nature that I bring to the game. You have to pay when you throw the ball up. That’s something you have to know with our defense, if you want to take a chance throwing the ball down the field your receiver is going to feel it.”
For the Falcons, this week leading into Sunday’s home game against Tennessee has been all about penalty avoidance.
Quinn brought in extra officials to work practice and point out various offenses. “I got warned once by the ref,” Mack, an 11-year veteran, said after Wednesday’s practice. “It was a practice rep and I didn’t think it applied. But in a game, you can’t hold onto guys that long.”
Players spoke of instituting a kangaroo court, fining themselves for penalties, ramping up the peer pressure. “It’s more the dishonor of being called out. It’s not really amount of the fine. It’s more that I was the guy that kind of hurt our team. You don’t want to be that guy,” said guard Jamon Brown, flagged twice against the Colts.
Coaches talked of the ever-shifting landscape and the need for all of them to adjust. For instance, this from linebackers coach Jeff Ulbrich, when talking about pass coverage: “We have to have a strong understanding that after five yards you can’t touch (the receiver). You just can’t. Things you got away two years ago, even a year ago, they’re not going to tolerate anymore.”
The head coach, the czar of messaging, started a team meeting by displaying this season’s schedule, and asking his players if they noticed who wasn’t on that list. The answer: The Falcons themselves. Don’t be in the position of beating yourself.
“Let’s make sure we’re fighting only one team, no more self-inflicted wounds that derail us,” Quinn said. “Get our football right, so on Sunday we’re fighting the opponent – in this case Tennessee – and only Tennessee.”
“Games are too hard to win when you play well. If you have penalties and hurt yourself it’s that much harder,” Mack said.
And that much harder to endure as a fan.
Sometimes it’s not a good thing to be a trend-setter, not here in the early season of too many penalties. Now it’s on the Falcons to lead the way back to watchable, winnable game days, if they can.
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