Accepted Penalties by Week, 2007 NFL Season

We crunched the numbers for the number of accepted penalties per game by week during the 2007 season. This doesn't cover other seasons so it is just a limited look. We expected to see lots of penalties the first few weeks (while the players got used to rule changes or worked out the pre-season sloppiness), but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The first 7 weeks were roughly around 11.6 per game, then it increased in weeks 8-10, then more or less settled to a level slightly lower than the first 7 weeks for the remainder of the season. Any thoughts?

Weeks 1-7: 11.56 accepted penalties per game (ranging from 11.25 to 12.07)
Weeks 8-10: 13.29 per game (from 13.08 to 13.43)
Weeks 11-17: 10.69 per game (from 9.56 to 12.25)
1: 11.25
2: 11.75
3: 11.38
4: 12.07
5: 11.36
6: 11.62
7: 11.50
8: 13.08
9: 13.36
10: 13.43
11: 11.25
12: 10.06
13: 12.25
14: 10.50
15: 9.56
16: 10.00
17: 11.19

Super Bowl 42: Giants and Patriots Postscript

Before Super Bowl 42, we took a look at what type of games the Giants and Patriots generally did well in. Now that we went out on a limb (not really, we didn't make any bold predictions), let's take a look at how the game turned out.

The Giants did better in games with a large number of penalties while the Patriots were the opposite. This didn't happen in the Super Bowl, though, because there were 9 total penalties (around 70% of regular season games had more penalties), so you would think this would favor the Patriots.

The Patriots do worse when a larger percent of penalties are called against them. This is not too surprising. But in any case, with 5 penalties out of 9 called against the Patriots, this did hold up in the Super Bowl (but not a very surprising fact).

The Patriots did not do that well when it had lots of penalties called against it (regardless of how many were called in total). The Patriots had 5 penalties, which was pretty much the median for them in the regular season, so this factor did not prove anything.

The Giants do a bit worse when they have a large number of penalty yards called against them (a bigger effect than the Patriots had). The Giants had 36 penalty yards against them in the Super Bowl. That was close to the median for them in the regular season, so this factor did not prove anything.

Before the game, we had said:

For the Giants, hope the game has a large number of penalties and a low number of penalty yards called against the Giants (although the number of penalties is not that important).

For the Patriots, hope the game has have a lower percent of the penalties called against the Patriots and that there is a low number of penalties against the Patriots.

Now that the game is over, these suggestions didn't really help much. One of them (number of penalties) did not really pan out while the other three didn't really get tested because the game was close to the median. Oh well, maybe next year we will have a bigger trend and a chance to test it out in the next Super Bowl!

Super Bowl 42: Giants and Patriots Trends By Game Statistics

Let us take a look at the types of statistics that appear in the games where the Giants and Patriots do the best. This does not help us predict a game before it starts, because we won't know how the game's actual statistics shape up until the game is underway. But maybe it will give you some interesting analysis to refer to during the game. In parentheses are the correlation figures for that statistic to either net points or Giants victories. No correlation figures for Patriots odds of winning because they won all their games.

Total penalties in the game: Giants do better with a large number of penalties called in the game. (0.168 by net points and 0.135 by win) while the Patriots do better with a lower number of penalties called in a game (-0.133 by net points).

Total penalty yards: little correlation.

Average penalty yards per penalty: we blogged before the semifinals about how the Giants typically do better in games where there are lower average yards per penalty. The Patriots have a similar trend. For the Giants, a negative trend (-0.161 by net points and -0.432 by win) while the Patriots also do better with a low average yards per penalty (-0.224 by net points).

Percent penalties called against the team: it seems like common sense that a team does better when the percent of penalties called against it is lower. But the Giants seem to be less affected by this factor (-0.171 by net points and -0.313 by wins) than the Patriots (-0.365 by net points).

Percent penalty yards called against the team: for both teams, they somewhat equally prefer to have a lower pecentage of penalty yards called against it. (Giants net points -0.383; Giants wins -0.493; Patriots net points -0.460).

Penalties against the team (regardless of how many total penalties are called): the Giants seem to do only a little bit worse as more penalties are called against it (-0.043 by net points and -0.152 by wins) while the Patriots do worse as it has more penalties against it (-0.289 by net points).

Penalty yards against the team: the Giants seem to do worse as more penalty yards are called against it (-0.238 by net points and -0.399 by wins) than the Patriots (-0.202 by net points).

Conclusion: We do not have a big enough sample to draw any strong conclusions. But if you are interested even in very weak suggestions, then you can say.

For the Giants, hope the game has a large number of penalties and a low number of penalty yards called against the Giants (although the number of penalties is not that important).

For the Patriots, hope the game has have a lower percent of the penalties called against the Patriots and that there is a low number of penalties against the Patriots.

Let's check in on these weak trends after we can look up the final Super Bowl statistics.

Super Bowl 42: Giants and Patriots Season Trends by Referee

Let's take a look at the regular season performance of the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. We are looking into the teams to better with certain types of referees and worse with other types of referees. We do not have enough games to draw solid conclusions -- but we have an entire season of 16 games, even though 16 is a small sample size.

We are working with what we have -- so let's ignore the strength of the opponent, the weather, and other very important factors. We are going to ignore all those important factors and just focus on correlations between certain referee statistics.

Let's see if there is a correlation between the net points (by how many points the team won) along with a correlation with the Giants' wins. We can't search for a correlation with the Patriots' victories because, well, they won all their games! We are comparing the result of each game with the season-long statistic for the referee who covered that game. For example, in week 8 the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins 13-10 in a game that Gerald Austin refereed. So we can compare the Giants win that week with how the referee who covered the game averaged 8.9 penalties per game over the course of the regular season.

Total penalties accepted per game: the Patriots won by a bigger margin with referees who had smaller total penalties per game (-0.387 correlation). The Giants had better net points with referees with larger total penalties per game (-0.151) and won more often with referees with larger total penalties per game (0.118). So, this suggests a referee averaging more penalties per game is better for the Giants. Interesting, but Mike Carey was 9th out of 17 referees so he is pretty much middle of the pack.

Total penalty yards accepted per game: Patriots better with low penalty yards (-0.321) while Giants better with high penalty yards (0.169 for net points; 0.173 for wins). Mike Carey was 11th out of 17, so slightly below average for total penalty yards per game. Slight advantage perhaps to the Patriots.

Average yards per penalty: Patriots like higher yards per penalty (0.162) while Giants somewhat also prefer higher yards per penalty (0.011 for net points; 0.142 for wins). Mike Carey is 14th out of 17 in average yards per penalty.

Total points per game: Patriots somewhat like lower total points per game (-0.154) while Giants very much like lower total points per game (-0.364 for net points; -0.396 for wins). Mike Carey is 6th of 17 for total points per game, so this seems like a slight advantage perhaps to the Patriots.

So if we look for trends by the head referee's season-long statistics, we come up with perhaps a slight advantage to the Patriots. But this is weaker than usual because the Super Bowl has a mixed crew of officials who did not work together in the regular season. So Mike Carey's statistics might not apply for the Super Bowl's mixed-crew.