NFL PENALTIES
on the RISE

By Max Simpson
Capital News Service

As the NFL owners meet this week to discuss rule changes, penalties -- and the men who call them -- are very much on their minds. Seven of the 23 proposed rule changes concern penalty enforcement and instant replay penalty review.

Last year, increased enforcement of existing rules led to a spike in penalties called by referees after three straight years of declines.

What led to the increase? Read on and find out.

Stronger Enforcement Means More Penalties

Penalty yards were way up in 2014 from the year prior. In each game, on average, refs called 12.8 penalties for 108.5 yards.

Illegal Contact Soars

A renewed focus on illegal contact was a major driver behind the increase in penalty yards last year. After being lightly enforced in 2013, the league ordered referees to pay more attention to it in 2014.

Illegal contact penalties can change the course of games because they provide an automatic first down plus penalty yards. This increase may have driven a proposal at this year's NFL owners meetings to allow instant reviews of any penalty resulting in an automatic first down.

Penalty Magnets: Defensive Backs and Offensive Linemen

Defensive backs and offensive linemen had the highest number of penalty yards called against them. Why? The linemen are active on every play and earn lots of flags for false starts and holding, two frequently called penalties. The defensive backs in the secondary can lose a significant chunk of yardage on a single flag on pass interference penalties.

Flags for Coverage and Holding the Line

Defensive backs were penalized for more than twice as many yards as the wide receivers and tight ends they cover. Offensive linemen lost about 3,000 more yards to penalties than their counterparts on the defensive line.

The most common penalty against defensive linemen was roughing the passer. For each roughing the passer penalty called against defensive linemen, offensive linemen were flagged for holding almost five times -- and more than five times for false starts.

The Most Penalized NFL Teams? Washington and St. Louis

Washington's NFL team, located on the extreme right of the graph below, had more penalty yards in 2014 than all but one team, St. Louis. For every five yards they gained on offense, they lost about one yard to penalties.

Washington also had the dubious honor of having the league's most penalized player, Bashaud Breeland (DB, 12 penalties for 161 yards), the most penalized tight end, Logan Paulsen (8 penalties for 62 yards vs 13 receptions for 78 yards and 1 TD), and the fifth most penalized offensive tackle, Trent Williams (10 penalties for 86 yards), on their roster.

By comparing penalty yards to offensive yards, we see that New Orleans, in the extreme upper left of the graph, had a team that put up league leading offensive numbers with the third fewest penalties of any team in the league.

Penalties Matter

How big a deal are NFL penalties? In aggregate, they matter more than the combined offensive output of the top three quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers. They're about equal with the combined output of all the 1,000 yard receivers in 2014 and almost double the combined output of all the 1,000 yard rushers.

Sources and notes: Player penalty data was drawn from team penalty charts available at The Football Database (footballdb.com). Offsetting penalties and penalties that are not called against an individual player are not counted in this data. Offensive stats for players and teams are from nfl.com.