The penalties from Bills vs Patriots didn’t have a huge impact.
The Buffalo Bills dropped a close game against their bitter division rival New England Patriots. In the aftermath of this devastating regular-season finale, I know we’re all just searching for answers on what possibly could have gone wrong.
In our dismay, it’s only natural to look for a scapegoat but I’m here to say that our root-cause analysis will have to continue, as the officials were not to blame for the team dropping to 13-4 on the season.
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Counts
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The two teams hovered right around the league average, with the Bills barely on the right side of the ledger and the Patriots on the wrong side of it. The league average that I’ve been talking about forever has been mostly stable, so look for an article where I dissect what specific things seemed to have led to an overall increase in flags this year. Assuming I remember to investigate and write it.
Penalty Yards
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For the most part, take the paragraph you just read about counts and read it again but think about yards. Well, with one tweak. Yeah, that’s right. I’m putting just about as much effort into this article as the Buffalo Bills did to try to win that game. I don’t know if I can make the Patriots lose even more draft capital by being lazy with an article but I’m willing to try.
Penalty Harm
New England Patriots
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The Patriots technically had a bad day if we’re using my rule of thumb. With 10.6 Harm total, they’re just a tick above our bad day cutoff of 10.0 Harm. That said, watching the game I doubt anyone felt flags were a huge factor. The biggest potential one was the holding flag on Caedan Wallace that looked like it negated a touchdown. Then they reviewed the play, reversed the TD, and Sean McDermott declined the flag to force a field goal.
Speaking of Wallace, he did have another holding flag as well as an ineligible downfield pass call. The ineligible downfield one wiped out a 13-yard gain and the holding flag that counted wiped out a 14-yarder as well as a first down from second.
Almost everything else is yards only including the Deatrich Wise Jr. roughing call which was half the distance to the goal. The exception to that was the intentional grounding call on Joe Milton. That was 15 yards as well as the lost down.
Buffalo Bills
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The Bills came in well under our bad day threshold with only 5.7 Harm total. The overall low count is a factor, as is the fact that three of the flags were five-yarders, with the illegal shift wiping out a two-yard gain for a very slight escalator.
Two offensive holding flags were assessed for ten yards and wiped out gains of seven and three yards. Not ideal but also not a major issue.
Tyler Bass has his first landing zone violation under new NFL kickoff rules
So let’s focus on the real fun. Tyler Bass failed to get a kickoff into the landing zone, which is part of this season’s new dynamic kicking rules. Rather than the opponent getting the ball at the 30 like a touchback, they get it at the 40, a difference of ten yards which is what I assess this flag as. This penalty was so much fun, look for a separate analysis article from me this week where I drop some thoughts on why it happened.