Seahawks' Opponent Penalties: Team Average vs. SEA Game

[Seahawkfan80]

If you are looking at the Ravens next season....must remember that they were toasted after the Bowl with a great portion of their team going to different locations. They lost their swagger as they lost players to other teams. I dont know if that changed their perspective as to penalties and dont know if they had a sizable amount of penalties during their Owl run? Maybe they just played consistently and were rewarded as such. I dont know..but wonder.

It's not about THEIR penalties, it's about their opponents penalties.

I can agree about your point. The thing is that their opponents may have less to worry about if the team is decimated by not having the threats they did in the Owl Year. It may change how you play forward the year after. Example...if you had a stellar Quarterback with running skills (Vick) who has to do time in a hospital for a "dog" bite....then your vision going into that game may alter causing you to not work up a fever for the quarterback. Hence...you may now not need to work as hard to get the defense to play as hard. The not as hard offense may not need as much to be defeated, thereby being less penalties. Also depends on the play calling of the striper ones.

 

[253hawk]

Football referees are there to keep balance, not to call every penalty they see.

Not this season.

 

[gulliver]

Do you believe that there is anti-Seattle biased officiating? I sometimes feel like there is but I've always felt this way.

I don't really believe the officials dislike the Seahawks.

If anything, I was thinking they might have an anti-champs bias to preserve parity around the league, but Salish's followup with the Ravens would indicate this [probably] was not the case, at least last year. There is always the chance, however, that it became a renewed focus this year--much like a particular type of penalty becomes a new "emphasis" each year.

Another possible theory is that officials watch the Hawks for penalties like, well, hawks. Remember last year, Harbaugh contacted the league prior to our second game demanding that they watch (and thus call) defensive penalties. That seemed to do the trick for him in that game, as we got 9 penalties for 85 yards--higher than our already high average.

Now fast forward to this year, and imagine every opposing coach doing this every week, and imagine the league already on high alert for us and comparatively low alert for our opponents.

That doesn't explain other teams' lower penalties this year though. To that, I would say: if you're committing a majority of your attention to the Seahawks, and you're looking for penalties, and you're EXPECTING to see us committing penalties, then not only are we going to be highly penalized, but a lot of 50/50s will go against us rather than our opponent--who is getting a de facto pass. Essentially we are already "guilty" every Sunday around kickoff, and officials spend the next 4 hours devoting their attention to us and looking to validate their expectation that we're committing a lot of penalties, which prevents them from paying the same attention to the other team.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

That doesn't explain other teams' lower penalties this year though. To that, I would say: if you're committing a majority of your attention to the Seahawks, and you're looking for penalties, and you're EXPECTING to see us committing penalties, then not only are we going to be highly penalized, but a lot of 50/50s will go against us rather than our opponent--who is getting a de facto pass. Essentially we are already "guilty" every Sunday around kickoff, and officials spend the next 4 hours devoting their attention to us and looking to validate their expectation that we're committing a lot of penalties, which prevents them from paying the same attention to the other team.

I said this in one of the other lame conspiracy theory threads about this topic.

When you're the SB champs, you get every teams full attention and best shot. That means the other team is going to be more focused, prepared and executing at a higher level than if they were playing the Jags or Raiders.

Look no further than the Chargers, Cowboys and Rams games, all three losses, and all three teams played out of their freaking minds against us.

I loathe these threads, it makes our fanbase look like all the other whiney everyone hates us fan bases we like to think we're better than. Well are we?

 

[gulliver]

I said this in one of the other lame conspiracy theory threads about this topic.

When you're the SB champs, you get every teams full attention and best shot. That means the other team is going to be more focused, prepared and executing at a higher level than if they were playing the Jags or Raiders.

Look no further than the Chargers, Cowboys and Rams games, all three losses, and all three teams played out of their freaking minds against us.

I loathe these threads, it makes our fanbase look like all the other whiney everyone hates us fan bases we like to think we're better than. Well are we?

If you have a substantive contribution to make--or a thoughtful objection to the facts you may or may not have bothered to read--then make it.

SalishHawk and myself devoted a few hours to approaching the subject factually and intelligently, by carefully analyzing the data and offering our thoughts. So far everything that has been said was substantive and respectful.

Until now.

Summing up indisputable facts--like that our opponents so far are enjoying ~30% fewer penalties whenever they play us--as "whiney" opinions is a post that is not worthy of this thread.

Really. Worst post of the thread so far.

I understand there are fans like you who categorically deny any sort of malpractice, and I understand further that you don't know when to turn it off--you just flat out hate that kind of chatter and have programmed yourself to call BS on it in literally every scenario, no matter what your eyes tell you.

P.S. If you think we only lost because our opponents were playing "out of their minds," you must have been watching different games. I'm seeing a Seahawks team with a ton of injuries, afflicted on offense by Percy's antics and subsequent personnel issues, missing tackles, special teams hiccups, not getting to the QB, etc.--while our opponents all employ the same dink-and-dunk blueprint to success. Really? You think the Rams--who had less than 300 yards of offense and less than 200 yards passing--played "out of their minds"? I'm just willing to believe that right now, in October, we're not the same team we were last year.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

[
If you have a substantive contribution to make--or a thoughtful objection to the facts you may or may not have bothered to read--then make it. .

I did make a substantive contribution, I told you my opinion as to why I thought the other teams were being called for less penalties. You casually brushed it aside without merit, just as I casually brush aside your charts and graphs that also prove nothing other than a coincidence.

My guess is if you asked the players or coaches on all teams involved which one of us is right, they'd side with me, not you.

 

[gulliver]

[
If you have a substantive contribution to make--or a thoughtful objection to the facts you may or may not have bothered to read--then make it. .

I did make a substantive contribution, I told you my opinion as to why I thought the other teams were being called for less penalties. You casually brushed it aside without merit, just as I casually brush aside your charts and graphs that also prove nothing other than a coincidence.

My guess is if you asked the players or coaches on all teams involved which one of us is right, they'd side with me, not you.

Dismissing hours of work, thousands of data points, and dozens of thoughtful posts as "whiney" is not substantive--and it's a little alarming to think you've racked up 3500+ posts if THAT is your standard for "substantive."

A couple thoughts about your claim that the coaches/players 'theoretically' agree with you:

*"The coaches and players would *probably* agree with me" is not good enough. It's not even an argument.
*The only person who has voiced his opinion on the matter is Earl. He disagrees with you.

Next.

 

[VivaEfrenHerrera]

Another way to try and see whether there's any significance to this might be to see whether it's happening to other teams this year. Are there other teams whose opponents are consistently committing penalties at rates that are below their own average? (The Niners were mentioned in this thread, but ideally, we'd want everybody.) How many other teams are experiencing this phenomenon?

 

[chris98251]

Well with all that said, I think it's about following the Money, Does the NFL want a NFC West team in a Super Bowl playing on the west coast this year? Or N.E or Denver vs the Cowboys.

 

[seedhawk]

Lets see now. We are and have been the most penalized team for a time now. So what! However, simply because we have that rep, the officials probably watch us a bit closer on both sides of the ball. If they are spending more time on us then our opponent, it is only logical the opponent will receive fewer penalty calls.