How did the Buffalo Bills do in the penalty department in 2024?
Hello everyone, it’s that time of year again. The one where I inundate you all with penalty data and facts aggregated from the previous year. For this entry I’ll be focusing on aggregate numbers. Stay tuned though, as the annual “Most Wanted” list will be soon to follow along with a deeper dive into trends. It’s time to dip our toes into the penalty waters of the 2024 season!
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Count
Now before I begin I want to add the disclaimer that these numbers inherently come from what was called on the field. I’m willing to hear arguments on “should have been called” or “should not have been called” but I don’t have ways to quantify that so you’re out of luck when it comes to objective conversation on that.
I bring this up because the data shows that overall the Buffalo Bills had an easier time with flags than their opponents when it comes to counts. The Bills were pretty darn close to exactly league average with just a slight tick to the right side of things. Their opponents on the other hand were not only on the other side of the ledger, but somewhat significantly so.
This is intriguing to me as usually a pool of almost half the league would trend to normalization and that’s not really what Buffalo saw this year. The Jets and Dolphins trended high with the Jets having the most flags per game this season which is likely a big factor here. When it comes to interruptions from the officials, the Bills were better off than their opponents.
While I like averages, especially after a full season of data, I also like to show the actual volatility that goes into them. The graphic above shows just Buffalo’s data for counts/true counts on a weekly basis. This is the weekly look at counts and true counts. The Bills may have been on the right side of average by a tiny bit, but the rollercoaster of this chart shows pretty clearly it was a week-to-week affair.
Penalty Yards
With both types of counts, both favored Buffalo. When it comes to assessed yards, it bears out as you’d expect with the Bills outperforming their opponents. When it comes to true yards though (data not available league wide) things are neck and neck.
For longtime readers you know what this means. For anyone new joining us today, what this shows is the reason this series began in the first place. The refs directly cost Buffalo fewer yards, but the bars on the right side of the graphic show that the Bills had more negated yards than their opponents.
On average, Buffalo had 18.1 yards negated by flags per game. Their opponents wiped out 10.25 yards per game on average.
I won’t expand much on this one since it’s similar to the counts but pay attention to the gaps on this chart. In many weeks, it’s not much, but against the Seattle Seahawks, San Francisco, and New York Jets (in Buffalo) there’s an enormous gulf between assessed and true yards.
Penalty Harm
For my proprietary stat, I’ll start off with a graphic comparing Buffalo against their opponents on a weekly basis. I’ll let you soak it in as there’s a lot of back and forth. If there indeed any new readers, ask about the Harm formula in the comments. For the gist of it, I look at yards negated, downs given up, points impacted by flag, etc. to come up with a rating scale. The higher the number, the greater the likelihood a flag was impactful.
Buffalo Bills
Usually this would show penalty counts and player names for a single game but trust me when I say that’s not a helpful chart for the entire season. Instead, I wanted to prep the deeper dive conversations and show off flag types throughout the year that had the greatest impact. As is usually the case, offensive holding had the greatest impact and it isn’t even close.
As an aside, this is why I don’t necessarily mind that defensive penalties often seem harsher on an individual basis. While that can 100% be true, the higher frequency of offensive holding flags and the amount of yards they tend to negate usually means offenses have the bigger flag issue.
I know what you REALLY want to know though and that’s “Who had the higher Harm” between Buffalo and their opponents. For the Bills, the season Harm was 209.8 or 10.49 Harm on average per game. Our bad day cutoff has been set at 10.0 Harm for a few years now which means Buffalo tended a bit on the wrong side of things here.
Opponents
Opponents also had offensive holding as their number one. I’ll let you gawk at the graphic yourself and get to what you want. Buffalo’s opponents had 190.2 Harm throughout the year. That breaks out to be 9.51 per week.
So there you have it! Despite seemingly better counts and yardage using the usual metrics, using my homebrew stat suggests that the Bills were more adversely impacted by flags than their opponents (on average). Also, this is why the “bad day” cutoff has been set at 10.0 Harm. The averages usually wind up around that number.