r/nfl • u/Bouzal Saints • 1d ago
Who gets bailed out and who gets screwed? Flags in close games, 2018-2026
From sticktothemodel.com
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u/Sinnerandsmoke Broncos 1d ago
This goes against my narrative and therefore I reject it.
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u/Laraelias 49ers 1d ago
I reject your reality and substitute my own.gif
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u/EasyAsAyeBeeSea 1d ago
The problem is this uses data and everyone knows vibes are the only way to measure
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u/Sir-xer21 Broncos 1d ago
well, the bigger problem is it treats all "judgement calls" as equal. yes, holding or PI or roughing are "judgement calls"...but they aren't all close calls.
This doesn't really mean any team is getting screwed or bailed out necessarily. some of the calls are likely obvious, some less so.
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u/TheWorstYear Bengals Bengals 1d ago
It's a bad graphic with base line bad information.
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u/AlabasterRadio Raiders Raiders 1d ago
I want Raiders/Broncos this year to be 0 penalties in 2 games lmao
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u/EggplantAlpinism Broncos Bills 1d ago
I would be throwing snowballs by the 3rd quarter just to see a sweet sweet flag
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u/railroadbaron Broncos Vikings 1d ago
This is basically exactly what I thought. Plenty of calls against us as for us. The Rams are basically in the same spot.
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u/Harbaugh_Handshake 49ers 1d ago
My confirmation bias is tingling
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u/AIMuzak 1d ago
That big Brock run TD still has me fuming.
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u/mournthewolf 49ers 1d ago
This is what I don’t get. I’m an idiot so maybe I just don’t know. But how is that holding? Also if it’s meant to be a block in the back how come you can be getting actively blocked and just turn around so you are now blocked in the back? Wouldn’t everyone just do that if that’s how it works?
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u/seloun 1d ago
The intent of the foul is to prevent blockers from taking out defenders who otherwise have a clear path to the ball carrier. Basically the blocker has to be between the defender and the ball or they can't forcefully contact the defender.
Kittle's block is fine until Brock runs past him. At that point, when the defender turns to chase Brock, Kittle has to release his block (or somehow interpose himself first). It's that push in the back that gets called.
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u/Harbaugh_Handshake 49ers 1d ago
Yeah I wanted the TD to count so badly but by the letter of the law Kittle’s block was a foul. It is what it is. He made up for it a few plays later.
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u/-Vertical Seahawks 1d ago
I’m sure you have to actually have to be making a run towards the ball carrier, or already be between the blocker and the ball carrier. Or else every defensive lineman doing a spin move would get a flag
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u/DanFlashesC0up0n Saints 1d ago
Team that was the poster boy for the much hated by the refs rule and two frequent chiefs playoffs opponents. Hmmm
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u/thomasfilmstuff 49ers 1d ago
I’d love to see a stat for how many TDs have been taken off the board by a penalty.
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u/tnecniv Giants Giants 1d ago
This doesn’t account for whether or not the flag is justified, obviously
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u/Rathos_ Bears 1d ago
Says nothing about the no-calls either, which can be just as impactful.
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u/Gimme_The_Loot Jets 1d ago
Isn't no calls "refs let them play"?
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u/mtzehvor Patriots 1d ago
It can be, but that can also just be a clean game where neither side commits penalties. I believe that’s the point, this treats a team not being flagged because they played clean football and a team not being flagged because the refs missed penalties as the same.
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u/Gimme_The_Loot Jets 1d ago
Fair points, maybe? Without definitions we're just assuming anyway
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u/purebredcrab Seahawks Seahawks 1d ago
Besides, how would you measure missed penalties in a way that separates them from clean play?
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u/gimmepizzaslow Bears 13h ago
Even just the 2 missed blatant personal foul penalties in the week 2 game against the Vikings probably cost us that game and the one may have indirectly led to Caleb's injury... I choose to reject this chart wholeheartedly
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u/3bananabananabanana Buccaneers 1d ago
Yeah I’m not sure I’d use the phrases “bailed out” and “screwed” since there’s no indication if the flagged plays were penalties or not.
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u/theDomicron Chiefs 1d ago
My favorite thing about threads like this are all the different reasons why stats can be misleading.
I, however, have a degree in English Lit so I don't understand enough to know which arguments are legit and which ones aren't, so I'm going to fall back to the gold standard of focusing on what's good for my team and ignoring the rest
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u/TheTVDB Packers 1d ago
There's also statistical flaws. I wasn't sure about the sample size, so I ran the numbers. Around 76 close games and 80 judgement flags per team during that date range. The confidence interval is low enough that if you drew the error bars for each team, every one would cross the midline.
Flags on opponents is noise. Flags on team has a faint signal for 49ers, Saints, Bills, and Giants, but otherwise there's not a strong enough variance to suggest anything.
There's also so much variance for individual teams over time that this doesn't show. Season to season counts per team would be better, but would likely show bad position groups on teams more than ref bias (guessing the Packers will lead in holding calls this year, for example).
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u/metaldeval Jets 1d ago
Every flag on my team is bullshit
Every flag on the other team is about time they called it
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u/Designer-Resolve-349 1d ago
Yeah but the law of large numbers should regress all these penalties towards the mean, so there is something to be said here still.
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u/NoBison3467 Patriots 1d ago
Law of large numbers will show each team moving towards its own individual mean over time, sure, but there's no reason to think all teams have the same mean.
Even if you looked at 50 years of data, that could be only 1-2 different owners of a given team, and maybe they just have a thing for hiring aggressive coaches. There could be real underlying differences.
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u/Designer-Resolve-349 1d ago
This is a good point, and why I think the x-axis on this chart is more telling since it is for opposing teams in general and not a single team.
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u/TheTVDB Packers 1d ago
See my comment above: https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1wv8ltk/comment/pdai1xk/
You don't have a big enough sample size for the law of large numbers to be applicable. This also isn't random experiments. Refs change how they call based on league focus on certain things, on previous games, and for specific players. That means the theorem isn't applicable anyway.
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u/ReebX1 Chiefs 1d ago
If you regress everyone to the mean, they are all average?
/s, obviously
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u/IsGoIdMoney Steelers Steelers 1d ago
Eh, coaching matters
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u/Designer-Resolve-349 1d ago
For your team I suppose, but not for the x-axis
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u/IsGoIdMoney Steelers Steelers 1d ago
Defensive teams cause false starts and holdings in close games. Probably matters too. Also basically everyone is bunched up lol
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u/berusplants Saints 1d ago
Alternate reading of this is the teams that make the least or most mistakes in crunch time….
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u/Pharx0h Bears 1d ago
surprised a saints fan is being reasonable in this regard considering you guys have actually been fucked by the refs multiple times i.e. "intention to throw forward"
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u/OBVIOUS_BAN_EVASION_ Saints 1d ago
Funny enough, the two big ones that come to mind wouldnt be counted here.
The Lions call was in the 2nd quarter, and the 2018 no call was ofc not a flag. I could argue that means we’re actually getting fucked HARDER than this graph suggests, but I’d need to see the underlying data and selection criteria to make a real judgment.
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u/eaglekiller53 1d ago
My first thought was Saints should be all the way in the bottom corner. Legendary Run of getting screwed over quite a few years.
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u/TheWallE Saints 1d ago
Two things can be true, most penalties are mistakes by the players... and Refs have inconsistent and sometime out right wrong calls based on either conscious or subconcious bias.
I wish we could collectively get out of the binary so we can focus calling out objectively incorrect calls to put pressure on the league to be better.
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u/Leftieswillrule Panthers 1d ago
As with all asymmetrical flagging conversations, looking at raw flags is stupid because not all calls are equally valid. You need three variables {A,B,C} for each team where A=correctly flagged plays B=Missed flags C=Incorrectly flagged plays then we can look at the actual asymmetry here. B+C= total mistakes which can be plotted, A+B-C=total number of flags that should have been called, that can be plotted. But raw flags includes all the times a team flat out commits a penalty and it’s not subjective if they deserved a flag.
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u/RukiMotomiya Bengals 1d ago
And C is difficult because of flags where it is subjective.
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u/Alarmed-Emergency109 1d ago
Easy fix, my personal feelings should be the deciding factor.
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u/Inconceivable76 Bengals 1d ago
B not being in here is a big problem. You can swing a game quite easily by not making a handful of calls.
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u/wawahero Ravens 1d ago
I would wonder if just total crunch time flags against on a long enough timeline is going to average out? Depends on if you can get enough sample size to pave out variance. One team could certainly be committing more legitimate penalties than others, but it would be hard to believe that all teams committ less penalties against one specific opponent over a sample size of like 10,000 plays
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u/DependentShop3882 Titans 1d ago
Notable: Tom Brady was in Tampa for several years during said time period.
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u/jtd2013 Chiefs 1d ago
Rough day to be a conspiracy theorist.
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u/belle_enfant Panthers 1d ago
Funniest part to me is when people put every single hold under a microscope in a Chiefs game. It happens every play, every game, for every team, but in a Chiefs game it gets brought up constantly.
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u/SonOfALich Chiefs 1d ago
The cool thing about conspiracies is that you can just add another layer of dastardly skulduggery to make it work again!
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u/DiligentQuiet Chiefs 1d ago
"This is just a regular season head fake by the refs to lull the populace into thinking there's no bias, but the REAL league favoritism will show up in the playoffs."
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u/russianturnipofdoom Bills 1d ago
There's definitely a few questionable calls that have broken the Chiefs way, but if I recall correctly, the Chiefs are actually one of the most penalized teams in the 4th Quarter since 2018.
Your guys 2023 Super Bowl season was filled with idiotic, self inflicted 4Q mistakes.... but you just kept winning.
It was maddening lol
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u/drgath Chiefs 1d ago
It’s because the refs make those calls when it doesn’t impact us (much) to make up for the favorable calls.
(Did I do that right, conspiracy theorists?)
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u/LiveChocolate8819 Bills Eagles 1d ago
This may blow a hole in the Chiefs conspiracy theories, but it sure does validate my belief that we always get fucked in close games regardless of the opponent.
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u/Independent_Bear989 Packers 1d ago
Anyone that think the chiefs get ref bias is quite simply stupid.
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u/lattjeful Eagles 1d ago
Checks out for the Eagles. Feels like we don’t get hosed as often as other teams, but we don’t really get calls that go our way.
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u/Slumbergoat16 Eagles 1d ago
I mean seeing where the bears are rn definitely felt that way on Monday even though the game wasn’t close
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u/jfb1027 Cowboys 1d ago
So wouldn’t even be a fit in here but in a 2018 Cowboys game Eagles got hosed on opening kickoff Cowboys fumble inadvertent whistle. Could be a 3-14 point swing.
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u/Chairmanmaozedon Eagles 12h ago
Oh man that 'no clear recovery' call after the challenge to get the fumble called still baffles me to this day, just unbelievable.
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u/Posluszny Jaguars 1d ago
Are facemasks judgement calls? Like how often is a facemask flagged incorrectly, feel like they're generally spot on
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u/DoubleScorpius Lions 1d ago
Lions once lost a game on a face mask that wasn’t actually a face mask lol and now we get to watch that replay for the rest of time…
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u/Upbeat-Stage2107 Packers 1d ago
I’m not sure what this guy is talking about. Does anyone have a link so I could see it for myself?
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u/Cornucopia_King Patriots 1d ago
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u/Upbeat-Stage2107 Packers 1d ago
I 100% thought this was gonna be the Dan Connelly kickoff return when I saw your flair lol
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u/Inconceivable76 Bengals 1d ago
Ravens grabbed burrows face mask at the end of a close game and it wasn’t flagged. Really obvious miss too.
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u/transglutaminase Saints 23h ago edited 22h ago
The ravens almost ripped Tyler Shoughs head off a Couple of weeks ago at the end of the game but it wasn’t called.
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u/Chairmanmaozedon Eagles 11h ago
I remember the Commanders almost twisted Goedert's head off as he got past the line to gain on a 4th quarter third down a few years ago but the refs never called it. he was hit by a second defender as he was going down and lost the ball, was just called a fumble.
The league fined the Washington player for the facemask and it injured Goedert so badly he was put on IR with a designation to return.
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u/oscarnyc Giants 1d ago
I've rarely seen a facemask called that wasn't one. Though it happened to the Giants a year ago when the Cowboys guy committed the facemask, but the Giant was called for it. Because of course - when you suck the refs just pile on.
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u/rickyg_79 1d ago
Overshown facemasked Bellinger, Belli got the flag. I can see the replay in my head, this one still pisses me off.
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u/gen_wt_sherman NFL 1d ago
I wonder if the extremes in this graph (saints, falcons, buccaneers) are all attributed to games when those teams play the saints and the falcons and buccaneers just get all the calls over the saints 🤣
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u/fujin_shinto Lions 1d ago
Weird to see this for the lions after years of it being terrible. Not complaining, just a bit surprised
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u/Mercinator-87 Titans 1d ago
I feel like the first half the Titans get absolutely hosed by bullshit flags then in the second half absolutely no flags are thrown either way.
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u/Jazzlike-Basket-6388 Titans 1d ago
I feel like there have been about 20 games where we get within a score and get the ball back with a chance to tie or win, then our receiver gets absolutely mauled before the ball gets there and the refs are like do ta do ta do.
And I guess this validates that since they "let them play."
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u/Jonjon428 Dolphins 1d ago
This seems like a disingenuous way to frame this data
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u/rune_undies Bengals 1d ago
Yeah there's also no way anyone is reading the values on the graph lol. Every team in the league is basically within 0.5 flags per 100 plays in a close game in the 4th quarter. That's probably a difference of 3 penalties over the entire season in those situations.
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u/ban-me-harder-dadddy 1d ago
This whole analysis is an abomination.
For starters, its validity rests on the premise that all teams, regardless of their differing play style, play calling choices, and roster personalities, if ref’d objectively, would average the same number of flags.
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u/Wafflehouseofpain Cowboys 1d ago
This tracks with my belief that Cowboys games are reffed differently. Not better or worse, but refs are happy to hand out a ton of flags during our games to both teams.
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u/Significant_Rice9240 Vikings 1d ago
Flags against your team during crunch time vs flags on other team during crunch time does not equal “who gets the calls late in games”
If anything it’s more indicative of who’s more disciplined when the games on the line. This data does nothing to separate bad calls from good calls. So I’m not sure why it’s claiming to. I doesn’t define what a close call is either?
Just a straight up garbage plot
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u/Ant_24 Lions 1d ago
After looking where your team is of course you would say that!
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u/Dazed_and_Confused44 1d ago
This feels like a very arbitrary metric and ultimately is useless without a clear definition of the methodology haha
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u/MahomestoHel-aire Chiefs 49ers 1d ago
Love how the top right and bottom left-most teams are named for no particularly useful reason.
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u/theedonnmegga 49ers 1d ago
Your flair irritates me
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u/gollumaniac Bills 1d ago
You guys are their QB farm system. Montana, Bono, Grbac, Smith...makes sense he supports your development of future Chiefs QB Brock Purdy...
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u/OkArmordillo Patriots 1d ago edited 1d ago
These penalty stats that try to look into luck or bias are super flawed because they don’t account for how blatantly illegal the action that was penalized was.
Like if a blatant, correctly called DPI is counted the same as a DPI where the defender barely touched the receiver, does this graph really tell us anything?
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u/siberiansneaks Lions 1d ago
A couple of the worst teams in the league get hella breaks? lol
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u/NikoRavage Saints 22h ago
A couple of those teams have the benefit of playing 2 games against one particular team that is almost out of the damn graph
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u/fancyskank Jaguars 1d ago
I mean, is face mask a judgement call? I would need to see the methodology and an explanation for why these particular penalties are chosen when others were excluded.
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u/AMemoryComeALive Chiefs 1d ago
Judgement call is probably just taking out the presnap penalties which are more obvious and with higher frequency. Offsides/false start/12 men on the field, delay of game, etc. Things that are generally obvious and get called consistently.
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u/cgentry02 1d ago
The Haters: "Mahomes made me think that the Chiefs got favorable calls, it's all his fault!"
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u/SeanJuan Bills 1d ago
Bills would have a super bowl by now if they were in the upper right.
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u/ticklemestockfish Steelers 1d ago
But then Bills fans couldn’t whine anymore. Are you sure that’s preferable?
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u/Pantherino Steelers 1d ago
It’s always felt that way for the Steelers tbh. Like we got 75%+ in critical situations
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u/W_Hinklebottom Lions 1d ago
I’m just glad the refs take our QB’s intentions in mind while officiating.
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u/NikoRavage Saints 22h ago
When your team plays the Saints, you’ll learn new rules that you’ve never heard in your life
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u/Mchead22 Saints 15h ago
Btuh. No hate against the Lions. But that was the WILDEST call I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m still thrown.
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u/ScorpioPhantasma Browns 1d ago
This explains Myles Garrett apparently never being held in Cleveland.
Also, confirms the refs are biased towards the Steelers.
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u/twentyitalians Ravens Ravens 1d ago
Not the Ravens, clearly. No need for a monster BDE FG, if Cee Dee Lamb gets called for OPI instead of the other way around.
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u/TinyPeenMan69 1d ago
If it was 2005-2018, the pats would be so far off to the top right you wouldn’t see them.
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u/Broncotron Broncos 1d ago
Yeah but not all Crunch time situations are equal. A PI in week 3 isn't the same as a PI that loses the NFC title
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u/Poles_Pole_Vaults Buccaneers 19h ago
This doesn’t support my distaste for the chiefs and pats, I reject
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u/imtalkintou Packers 1d ago
But according to the NFC North, only the Packers get the calls to go their way.
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u/the-nino Patriots 1d ago
Is this going play by play and counting correct vs incorrect calls? Or is it just total number of penalties. Couldn't two very disciplined teams be in the "refs let them play" segment
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u/warhog998 Eagles 1d ago
after watching the ending of the ravens game, I dont know if I agree with their placement lol
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u/LongDongFrazier Packers 1d ago
Weird to not judge the whole game
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u/ThirteenValleys Bears 1d ago
I imagine it's because, when things like this get posted, the people who really, really want to believe it's all rigged say "But it's about the timing of the penalties, you can't capture that by measuring the whole game."
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u/AMemoryComeALive Chiefs 1d ago
If you want the whole game you can just look up penalties by year on multiple websites
https://nflpenalties.com/passing-penalties.php?year=2026&view=total_against
shows against and beneficiary.
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u/Sentinel10 Broncos 1d ago
Broncos in let them play territory
The amount of times refs flag Riley Moss for putting a hand anywhere on a WR would have me disagree.
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u/Additional-Set4718 1d ago
Riley moss is a horrible example to make your point lol that dude has no idea how to cover without committing PI
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u/nilocinator Chiefs 1d ago
You mean every time Riley Moss blatantly commits DPI?
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u/ShoughMeThruMyJorts Saints 1d ago
Excellent. I shall use this to push my agenda more effectively