Good article, and nice to know, but count me among those who don't want to focus on who the officiating crew is each game, and how it will affect the game. I think I'd rather just not know.

Fascinating article. Be interesting to see if any TV commentators pick up on it.

I'm surprised that there is that much disparity in false start calls. It seems like it should be called fairly uniformly as it is a fairly black-and-white situation...unless they can't decide who moved and call a do-over.

Nemmers and his crew doled out more penalties per game than any other crew in the National Football League last year: 20.6, significantly ahead of second-place Ed Hochuli’s 19.1 penalties a game

Yeah, YOU tell Ed Hochuli he throws too many flags. To his face.

Seriously, awesome article. Can we get penalty ranks and opponent penalty ranks for 2005 for all teams? Or are they already out there somewhere?

This makes me more optimistic for the Saints, nice.

In that table (comment #6), there actually isn't any correlation between penalties and opponents' penalties. The correlation coefficient (r = -.07) is basically zero, and it doesn't even have the sign you want (and if we use the rankings instead of the number of penalties, it's even worse: r = -.19). For every team like the Giants (2nd in penalties, 1st in opponents' penalties) or the Browns (26th in penalties, 26th in opponents' penalties), there's a team like the Dolphins (4th in penalties, 30th in penalties against) or the Panthers (31st in penalties, 7th in penalties against).

Do you have the table for penalties by officiating crew for 2004 (like the table in comment #1)? I'd like to be able to put a number on referees' year-to-year consistency. It would also be interesting to see the 2004 version of the team table (in comment #6) to see how consistent teams are from year to year in their penalties and their opponents' penalties.

If refs are consistent from year to year, then you could come up with a referee-adjusted number of penalties per team, and if teams' opponents' penalties are also reliable, then you could include opponent adjustments as well.

Is a difference in flags thrown of 20.6 vs 19.1 statistically significant over so few games?

Just throwing this out there... could the refs' numbers be at all affected by drawing certain teams more often? I.e., if the Giants are penalized a lot AND a certain crew officiates their games more than others, wouldn't that throw off the numbers? Or is that offset by looking at the consistency over several seasons?

I'd never have guessed the teams that get less penalties than their opponents: Dallas, New England, Indy, Denver and Seattle.

Shocking!

RE: 7
I remember a Pats game the last year or two where the specific crew came up in the game coverage. I think it was in the Herald, and the source was that someone in the Pats organization charted the refs. It was in regard to some penalty in the secondary, and probably part of the whole "point of emphasis" story line that year.

This should have been done years ago. The league will never crack down on bad officiating until it is forced to deal with it by popular acclaim. We have the technology now. We should use it.

I would like to see the breakdown for 'home-team advantage' by ref crew; the number of penalties called for and against the home team throughout the season. In the playoffs last year, may that memory quickly fade from mind, it was astonishing the number of penalties called for the home team in every game except the ones the Steelers were involved in. It was a very interesting trend.

#13--Are you saying the Seahawks get the better of officiating in their games? Really? Even with games like the Vinnie Testaverde helmet "touchdown" and the Ravens shoot-out where the clock didn't stop? I also heard there might have been some issues with the officiating in some big game the Seahawks played last February, but I don't remember hearing much about that ...

#16:
I think he was pointing out that all of those teams are playoff teams. At least htat's the impression I got.

Admittedly Detroit and Balto didnt help their cases, but the officiating over DET vs car, and BAL vs det, last year couldnt have been more obviously tilted.

And oh yes, seattle was screwed on 2 TD calls in the SB. SEA got a TD (if that is a pushoff, lets see the welts) flagged off, and PIT got a TD where it should only have been a FG.

Cycle wreck = karma?

Have you considered starting a "Super Bowl XL Officiating" thread to go with Manning-Brady?

Hey, if somebody starts a SB officiating thread to compete with the PeyTom Branning thread, I'll start posting BOTH sides of Peytom to keep it in its indisputable throne as the biggest mess and waste of keystrokes on the planet.

Oh, and go look at the pushoff again--it might have been subtle, but the defender's feet skip backwards. He didn't do that on his own.

Back to officiating, man the Giants look as if they are in the ugliest games ever with those combined rankings. But look at Denver's sweet differential. If they can bottle that, it can cover for a few flaws I bet.

Re: 16

Is there a team that hasn't had at least one at-best questionable game-changing referee or league decision over the past few years? Largely off the top of my head, and limiting it to games within the last 5 seasons that the team lost:

Patriots: The Asante Samuel pass interference and Champ Bailey fumble in the Divisional Playoff last year
Dolphins: ?
Bills: ?
Jets: The refs stopping the game in Oakland in 2002 for 5+ minutes after Tim Brown's 1,000th career reception (a 6-yard pass on 2nd and 16), killing all momentum; the Raiders scored the go-ahead TD the next play

Steelers: the refs placing the ball on the wrong hashmark after a penalty in the 2002 AFC Championship - next play was punt return TD
Bengals: ?
Ravens: ?
Browns: ?

Colts: The lack of illegal contact penalties during the 2004 AFC Championship game.
Jaguars: ?
Texans: ?
Titans: ?

Broncos: ?
Chiefs: ?
Chargers: ?
Raiders: The tuck rule game vs. New England in 2002.

Giants: the non-called pass interference on the last play of the 2003 First Round game against the 49ers
Redskins: the Mike Alstott 2-point conversion last year
Cowboys: ?
Eagles: ?

Bears: ?
Vikings: the Packers' fumble on the kickoff near the end of their Week 10 game in 2004; Vikings thought they recovered
Lions: the overturned Marcus Pollard TD at the end of last year's Bucs game; the bizarre Samkon Gado pass in last year's Packers game
Packers: ?

Bucs: the incorrectly ruled onside kick in the 2003 Colts game; the "leaping" call in OT of that same game
Panthers: ?
Falcons: ?
Saints: The NFL's decision to move last year's Week 2 game to Giant
s Stadium

Seahawks: last year's Super Bowl
Rams: ?
Cardinals: ?
49ers: ?

Feel free to fill in this list for the teams I left out.

Superbowl XL was, for all intents and purposes, a Pittsburg home game. They were even handing out yellow towels in the stands.

I seem to remember the Saints getting hosed pretty good by bad umpiring last year.

Travis, those are the highly visible bad call. Every game is full of holds that aren't called leading to big gains, or holds that call back big gains that are spurious.

Memorable calls from last year:
Eli Manning's side-ways pass ruled "incomplete" against the Vikings. This has got to be the most entertaining game from last year... and that was probably the most entertaining replay result...with the ref faking out Mike Tice.

Chargers had some spurious calls in the Dallas game. Roughing the passer that was called about 10 minutes too late, and also pass interference unevenly ruled.

Chiefs had the game against Dallas where their DE was about to sack Bledsoe and was mugged.

There was another game last year... I want to say with the Rams vs an NFC south team where the ref's blew the on-field call and they were out of replay challenges... some type of pass to the TE where he should've been ruled down but they ruled a fumble and it was returned for a TD.

... and didn't some team in another NFC South game get a free re-kick on a game winning field goal? I think the penalty was a defensive hold.

The Redskins got tuck-ruled against Denver last year. The logic behind not getting rid of it was no one understand the rule in the first place, right?

Re #23:

Superbowl XL was, for all intents and purposes, a Pittsburg home game. They were even handing out yellow towels in the stands.

Uh, no. They were selling Terrible Towels (and not even special Super Bowl ones) in the concourse, and on the street for that matter, but nobody was handing them out. The Steelers were so well represented because Detroit is a reasonable drive from Pittsburgh, the Steelers have a lot of fans, and it had been a decade since the Steelers had last been in a Super Bowl, let alone 25 years since they'd won. Most of the Towels you saw were purchased long before their owners got to Detroit.

Re 15:

I'm with you. I think a look at the home-vs-away broken down per officiating crew would be pretty damn interesting.

The thing that first jumped out at me was how much of an outlier the Giants are among the top 5 most penalized teams with regards to penalty differential:
Ari: +46
Oak: +45
NYG: -3
Bal: +28
Mia: +40

I'm shocked that the most popular team in the #1 market is the one that breaks even.

re: 9 (and back to talking about the article), would an interpretation of that be that even though the refs significantly affect the number of penalties called in any particular game, over the course of a season the team is the much more important factor in determining how many penalties it gets; because it will usually draw some high-penalty officiating crews and some low-penalty crews. Maybe the NYG were an exception in that they happened to draw a bunch of high-penalty crews.

I also wonder if some teams significantly affect opponents' penalties; some rushers or receivers get held a lot, or if the defensive front is always trying to guess the snap count that could lead to offsides penalties on them and to false starts on the offense.

RE: #16

The Browns most famous incident related to the Jacksonville bottle-throwing game. Tim Couch throws a pass to Quincy Morgan on fourth down; the pass is ruled complete. Another play is run, second down. The Jacksonville coach challenges the fourth down conversion, the play is reviewed, and the catch is overturned, ending the drive. Say what you want about the fan's reactions, Terry McAulay screwed us on that.

He also screwed us again this year in the Bengals game; tied 20-20, he called "Le-high Bowden" for pass interference because Chad Johnson fell down after pushing off of him. We hate Terry McAulay in Cleveland.

Didn't Peter King do a MMQB on this, with slightly less emphasis on the numbers?
#2 In 10 Things I Think I Think. Link in name.

22,

How can anyone disagree with the Den-NE pass interference call? The DB ran into the WR and used his body to push him completely OB while making no attempt for the ball.

Yes, a DB who gets position on the WR and forces the WR to go through him while both make a play for the ball does not commit PI. Both are entitled to go for the ball. But in the case at hand, the DB went AWAY from the ball. He wasn't making a play for the ball. Not only was he clearly using his body to obstruct the WR's path to the ball (sufficient alone for PI if he makes no play on the ball), but he was also actively using his body to push him OB.

Just to make sure you understand the point -- if a WR is racing downfield toward a pass and the DB steps in front of him to impede him from getting to the ball, it is PI. Even if the DB uses his back rather than his chest to make contact. The fact that the DB "has position" is only relevant if he tries to catch the ball. The DB can not screen off a WR the way a hoops defender screens off on a defensive rebound (unless he also goes up and gets the rebound). He can't box out and let the ball fall to the ground.

Re: 30

I didn't say that I myself disagreed with the pass interference call (my feelings are irrelevant), but lots of people did, making the call "questionable."

Re: 24
My list was limited to the highly visible, nationally-seen calls that had a great impact on the game (like I mentioned, I made the list "off the top of my head").

The NFC South re-kick last year was in the Week 6 Falcons-Saints game (I had forgotten about it). I didn't include the call in last year's Vikings-Giants game, because the Vikings won anyway.

In a multiple regression, the coefficients for “team� and “officials� are both about .98 with miniscule P-values, and the sample size is 2,048 games.

That's all I needed to hear.

Is there a database of league apologies? Is it easy to find out who gets the most apologies from the league for blown calls? And what officiating crew is apologized for most?

That will split the "bad calls" into a group of obviously wrong calls and judgment calls that didn't go your way. For example, overturning an interception because the player made a "football move" after intercepting it is clearly a wrong call. Calling offensive pass interference when the guy pushes off a few feet in front of the ref (granted, not hard enough to leave welts) is a judgment call. The first garnered an apology, and the second one didn't.

And the fact that Triplette doesn't call many false starts makes another nonsensical play from that Colts game make more sense. Two or three Colts jumped across the line, all pointing at one Steeler. Triplette whistled the play dead, decided that there was no penalty, and respotted the ball at the same place.

Re: 30

That's a real interesting interpretation of that play stan. The only time I saw Samuel move away from the ball was when Lelie pushed him in the back(arguably offensive PI), and Samuel was looking up and back towards the ball the entire time.

Re: 33

An incomplete list of NFL apologies for referee mistakes:

Steelers-Colts, playoff game, 2005 season (Steelers won anyway)
Giants-49ers, playoff game, 2002 season
Seahawks-Ravens, 2003
Steelers-Titans, 2000
Steelers-Browns, 2000
Seahawks-Jets, 1998
Steelers-Lions, 1998
Colts-49ers, 1998
Jets-Redskins, 1996
Chiefs-Broncos, 1991
Browns-Steelers, 1978

NFL denied apologizing:
Seahawks-Giants, 2005 (Seahawks won anyway)

Not to forget the Carolina Dallas game last year which cost the Panthers the division title and home-field advantage in at least one playoff game. The running into the kicker call against Julius Peppers. The kicked ball apparently took a magical right turn worthy of a Kennedy bullet.

Re: 28

The coach didn't challenge - it was in the last two minutes, so it was ordered from the booth. However, replays clearly showed the umpire reacting to the signal long after the ball had been snapped, so there's no way it should have been allowed.

Particularly galling is the fact that several weeks before, the Browns had been on the opposite side of the exact same situation, and came out on the short end of that one too. At Chicago, they were in the process of blowing a game like only they can, when a Bear pass was ruled complete when it obviously wasn't (he got zero feet in bounds, whereas Morgan just flat dropped the ball). The Bears rushed to get snap the ball, the booth signaled for a replay right after the snap, but the officials ruled that the signal came too late, so the play stood. Of course, the rule apparently changed within a few weeks without anyone being notified. Or else the rule has always been "when in doubt, screw Cleveland in any way possible".

And in case anyone brings it up, do I have any problem with the fan reaction? Those fans who waited around to throw things at the officials, yeah, I got a problem. Those who just chucked stuff onto an empty field at the (basically) end of the game? Eh, I could do without it, but it's nothing to go all Joe Buck over.

Re: 22

How about the Music City Miracle?

For a strange rip-off decision involving the Bengals...

In 1988, the Bengals were in the playoffs and were running the first no-huddle offense. In the first playoff game, the Seattle nose tackle faked injury several times on third down to get subtitutions in. No penalties by the Refs in the game. Now, faking an injury is a violation covered by 'unsportsmanlike conduct'.

Anyway, after the Bengals won, they appealed to the league. The league replied with a decision that the No-huddle was such a threat to the game that if the Bengals caught Bills in the AFC championship with too many men on the field or off side it would be a penalty on the Bengals. This decision came on the day before or the morning of the game.

Bengals won anyway.

A few years later, the Bills are playing the no-huddle, and it is no longer a threat to the sanctity of the NFL. Imagine that!

Re22

Did you miss the rams patriots superbowl or have you just forgotten the amount of bad calls in that game that went against the rams? If you want a particular one I will go for the uncalled intentional grounding by Brady on the last drive. That was robbery which is normally only seen in the company of a bengal

Re: 41

The only bad referee decision I remembered "off the top of my head" from the Rams-Patriots Super Bowl was allowing the final seconds to tick off the clock despite the fact that Vinatieri's FG had already hit the net.

The most dramatic penalty of the game was the Patriots' defensive holding on 4th and goal, negating a Patriots fumble return TD and leading immediately to a Rams TD.

The replay officials are way too slow within 2 minutes. If I were a coach I would run my butt over the ball to force the officials to review a play if I thought it was even close.

I saw this at the end of the MNF preseason game... Vikings had a nice 20 yard catch on 4th down and rushed to the line to spike the ball. I know they were trying to save time off the clock, but I'm noteven sure ESPN gave us a review of it.

Re 42 - Travis I won't go through the whole thing but click on my name for an excellent analysis (not my site btw)