Bills vs. Jets, Week 18: Laundry Day, featuring tons of flags

Photo by Ryan Kang/Getty Images

Seemingly lopsided, but closer in Harm than expected

At the beginning of the Week 18 game between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets and after the first few flags hit the turf, I commented to a fan next to me something like “Sure, let’s have a flag on every play!” I’m so sorry everyone, I didn’t know the officials were listening.

Thanks to the volume of flags and some delays getting the data, this week will be light on GIFs, but I did review a number of flags to give opinions on them — which will be in bullets for easy reference.

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Standard and Advanced Metrics

Counts

By the standard measures, this was an incredibly lopsided game that favored the Bills. So much so in fact that you could start off a pretty convincing bar argument that if it weren’t for flags, maybe the Jets would have been in this game. We’re penalty nerds though, so we know to look deeper than the surface.

Yards

When looking at the assessed yards, the incredible lopsided perspective continues. Adding in negated yards closes the gap some, but there’s still a pretty big jump between the Bills and Jets in True Yards. This gives a hint into the underlying story, but wait...

There’s more!

Penalty Harm

New York Jets

There are just way too many this week, so I’m going to lean on my cop out phrase of “let me know what I missed in the comments” and I’ll try to get back to you there. The Jets had 21.4 Harm in this game. It’s the second-highest Harm output by an opponent this year. The Jets in Week 17 were only outdone by the Jets in Week 6 where they had 24.1 Harm. It seems like the rivalry is a little personal.

Speaking of which, there were FIVE unnecessary roughness calls against the Jets. That’s unreal. Forget the boo-boo flags in the mix because five roughness calls is absolutely a big story. I’ll cover these five in bullets as well as a couple of the more meaningful ones.

• The first roughness flag on defensive tackle Quinnen Williams was yards only and in my opinion a little ticky-tack. Williams makes contact after his second step hits the ground so I’m not saying it’s a bad call, but it’s one that wouldn’t jump off the screen at me.
• Quarterback Aaron Rodgers was called for a late hit out of bounds, which was 100% the right call. Because it came after the interception and at the end of the return, it was yards only.
• Defensive lineman Michael Clemons gave up yards and a free down. It was also an obvious call as it’s the play where running back James Cook’s progress was stopped in a pile and Clemons jumped up with arms out like he was trying to be an actual jet and came crashing down on the pile. Since it was a little funny, here’s the crowd-surfing penalty...

• The second Williams one was half the distance to the goal and yards only for 0.6 Harm. This one was pretty clear as he shoved quarterback Josh Allen after the ball was released and — Allen may have sold it a little bit.
• The final one from defensive tackle Solomon Thomas was a good call. Allen got the ball off on the run and Thomas charged with his shoulder instead of pulling up. This one could have been huge as it occurred on third down, but it came during the high-point touchdown by wide receiver Keon Coleman, so it was assessed on the extra point.

Buffalo Bills

You’d think that by Harm this game wouldn’t have been close, but Buffalo amassed 18.3 Harm of their own. A large part of this is the Spencer Brown holding call, which was assessed for 10 yards, erased a 37-yard catch by Keon Coleman, and that catch was a first down from third. That’s 1.0 + 3.7 + 2.0 = 6.7 Harm. In addition to that, you can see from the graph there’s a fair amount of middle Harm flags.

Aside from the boo-boos, here are my thoughts on the Bills’ flags:

• The roughness call on center Connor McGovern is about as easy of a call as you get, with McGovern coming in well after the play and blasting defensive end Will McDonald IV from behind. I don’t think head coach Sean McDermott likely chewed him out though as McDonald gave offensive tackle Alec Anderson a shove as he was getting up. Like the old saying: “The second guy gets caught.”
• I’m not a huge fan of the flag on right tackle Spencer Brown. One of the little-known exceptions to offensive holding calls is that it shouldn’t be called if it occurs as the result of the defensive player using a “rip” technique. Well guess what; the defensive player used a rip technique against Brown. Arguably, Brown could have corrected and held for quite some time after the rip technique, but I recall defensive end Jerry Hughes not having these called. I don’t hate the flag, but I can’t see it as great either. How about you judge...

• The holding on running back Ray Davis on the other hand was clear as day. The defender was about to run by him and he hung on him for dear life.
• Watching the replays at the stadium, I didn’t think wide receiver Amari Cooper shoved off all that hard for his offensive pass interference flag. The defender looked like he was hit by a “Mortal Kombat” uppercut though, which will draw the refs’ attention. I’m not accusing anyone of a flop mind you. Sometimes when you’re running, even a slight contact can have an exaggerated effect.
• I don’t mind the illegal contact on cornerback Rasul Douglas. The play started off with a little jam in man coverage. Douglas was making contact as the receiver was even with him, which is prohibited.
• Safety Cole Bishop was lucky the ball wasn’t in the air as he was obviously grabby and twisted his man a little bit. Bishop’s flag came on third down, giving up a free first.

Coming back to the Spencer Brown holding flag, one of the reasons you can’t objectively say the Jets may have been in this game if it weren’t for flags is this one. Coming within the first four minutes of game time, it wiped out a huge gain by Buffalo and landed them at 3rd & 13. They converted and went on to score a touchdown.

Counterpoint, a couple Jets flags did help them on that drive, but the McGovern roughness call was also earlier in the drive. In the first half of the game, Buffalo had eight flags to seven from New York. In the first 11 flags of the game, seven were Buffalo. The game wasn’t over at the half, but the Bills established a tone that continued and took off after the break.

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Weekly Trackers

The trackers are on hiatus this week as I contemplate what information I want to hold for the remainder of the season for my end-of-year recaps. I’m pretty confident the Most Wanted lists won’t be back until then, and the others are toss-ups at the moment.