The problem with penalty stats like that is it's easy to cherry-pick; the Bucs are pretty high up on that "benefit from penalties" list, and it's not because of the Tom Brady era. Presuming my quick scan of the table is right, the Bucs in the 2018 had the most penalties committed against them, and nobody even remembered the team existed in 2018. Am I supposed to believe the refs have been giving extra benefits to Tampa and Cincinnati as well, or is my paranoia stopping with Pittsburgh?
Tampa at +5.37 is well within a standard deviation or two from the mean when it comes to penalty differential.
Pittsburgh at +17.19 is not just the outlier, it is a full +5.62 or 33% more "fortunate" than the next nearest outlier. There is no other statistical gap that comes anywhere close to that.
Doing the math, the arithmetic mean is 0,034375 with a standard deviation of 6.754646057. Tampa is well within a single standard d.
Only four teams are outside of one standard deviation and Pittsburgh stands alone at three by a statistical country mile.
This is what we would refer to in the business as "statistically significant".
It takes more than five data points to become "statistically significant", but it's a sufficient number for "confirmation bias".
we have 32 data points.
Still not statistically significant by any useful definition, and wide swings in data are expected. In this case, the data doesn't support your hypothesis of the league favorite Pittsburgh unless you are being very specific regarding the delta between average penalty yards against for and average penalty yards received over a five-year span. There are quite clearly a number of years where Pittsburgh does not have the most penalty yards against, so it's not some consistent pattern. The real difference of significant here is Pittsburgh commits a lower amount of penalties, and, well, the old adage is a large part of controlling penalties comes down to coaching, and Pittsburgh has clearly had the kind of consistency in coaching most teams can't even dream of. In terms of penalties against (a less-controllable aspect), the difference isn't vaguely as stark.
This is confirmation bias, plain and simple, and is shoddy statistical work. One of the things I find genuinely amusing about this table is the usual canard was always "the refs prefer New England" or "Brady gets all the calls", and those very common suppositions aren't supported by this data in the vaguest.
Raw penalty yardage stats are nothing more than pure statistical noise, like QB WINZ. Without context, how is this meaningful? How many of those penalties are "easy", like false starts or illegal formations? How many are considered shoddy or questionable PI/illegal contact calls? How many occurred during a critical down and distance late in games or other particularly meaningful situations?
This is not "statistics". These are just plain numbers.
It's interesting to see the drop in New England and rise in Tampa Bay the last two seasons though.
Sure seems like Brady is the one that gets all the calls, not Belichick
Still not statistically significant by any useful definition, and wide swings in data are expected. In this case, the data doesn't support your hypothesis of the league favorite Pittsburgh unless you are being very specific regarding the delta between average penalty yards against for and average penalty yards received over a five-year span. There are quite clearly a number of years where Pittsburgh does not have the most penalty yards against, so it's not some consistent pattern. The real difference of significant here is Pittsburgh commits a lower amount of penalties, and, well, the old adage is a large part of controlling penalties comes down to coaching, and Pittsburgh has clearly had the kind of consistency in coaching most teams can't even dream of. In terms of penalties against (a less-controllable aspect), the difference isn't vaguely as stark.
This is confirmation bias, plain and simple, and is shoddy statistical work. One of the things I find genuinely amusing about this table is the usual canard was always "the refs prefer New England" or "Brady gets all the calls", and those very common suppositions aren't supported by this data in the vaguest.
Raw penalty yardage stats are nothing more than pure statistical noise, like QB WINZ. Without context, how is this meaningful? How many of those penalties are "easy", like false starts or illegal formations? How many are considered shoddy or questionable PI/illegal contact calls? How many occurred during a critical down and distance late in games or other particularly meaningful situations?
This is not "statistics". These are just plain numbers.
Least penalized:
Pittsburgh
Carolina
Miami
New England
Cincinnati
Philadelphia
Most penalized:
Jacksonville
Kansas City
Dallas
Las Vegas
Detroit
LA Rams
If you are going to try to tell me that there is some sort of quality of coaching correlation that explains the differences in these two groups, I am calling bullsh*t.
If you are going to try to tell me that there is some sort of quality of coaching correlation that explains the differences in these two groups, I am calling bullsh*t.
The thing is, I am not saying that, and I am not making actual conclusions with this shoddily-built table. I am saying this is a shoddily-built table nobody can make vaguely useful conclusions with, because this data was arranged in this way for a very specific reason; to attempt to use numbers to make it look like the league is cheating for the Steelers. The only way you can come to that conclusion is by looking at the last column, which is put there to support a pre-existing conclusion. That's the only way this works; if you break it down by looking at specific columns, the utter bullsh*t is immediately visible. Last year, by a quick scan the Steelers had the third-most penalty yards called on their opponents, and committed best-guess bottom half of the top ten in penalty yards? That's not anything vaguely resembling a red flag. Go back to 2019; yes, the Steelers have the most penalties against opponents, but the penalty yards called on them? It's not vaguely at the top.
There is not a consistent pattern showing a year-by-year bias in favor of the Steelers, and the only way to come to that conclusion is for somebody to create a table specifically designed to show it. This is absolute, utter, and complete bullsh*t, with no basis in anything vaguely approaching meaning or reality. It's noise, and it's no different from Skip Bayless making a HAWT TAKE except whoever vomited out this garbage decided to look smart and use numbers instead.
And, of course, even beyond the numbers . . . the league does not have consistent crews for officials. They change, people come and go, and there's turnover both in terms of officials in general and the specific makeup of officiating crews. What you are essentially asserting is that there is a league-wide conspiracy, supported by dozens and dozens of officials along with league staff, running for years on end, and nobody has ever, even once, whispered a single word of it. There is either a mandate from the league that is the kind of conspiracy Qanon nuts would think was too much, or every single goddamn official in the league has an unconscious bias driving their decisions in games.
This table is crap, and, as somebody who has spent a lot of time doing data analysis, clearly a pet peeve. It's crap.
It's interesting to see the drop in New England and rise in Tampa Bay the last two seasons though.
Sure seems like Brady is the one that gets all the calls, not Belichick
Not really; last year for Tampa really isn't an outlier on either ends of this so-called data, and wasn't the highest year in any of the five years displayed for the franchise. As for the Patriots, yeah, drops on both sides of it, but there certainly wasn't a comparable jump-up in Tampa. Again, this is just noise disguised with Excel.
Wait the league favors the Eagles? I feel special and heard. Validate me please.
Wait the league favors the Eagles? I feel special and heard. Validate me please.
They feel bad for you, is all.
It takes more than five data points to become "statistically significant", but it's a sufficient number for "confirmation bias".
Conversation probably should've ended here.
That’s some data. I think drawing real conclusions from aggregated stats across a few years is pretty meaningless. Take Pittsburgh. The reason they’re right up there is because they play Cleveland and Baltimore twice a year, who are on average, highly penalized teams. There’s clearly a division clustering effect happening.
Or here.
Not really; last year for Tampa really isn't an outlier on either ends of this so-called data, and wasn't the highest year in any of the five years displayed for the franchise. As for the Patriots, yeah, drops on both sides of it, but there certainly wasn't a comparable jump-up in Tampa. Again, this is just noise disguised with Excel.
Also the Patriots are visibly less disciplined this year than most. They had back to back false starts at the beginning of the Panthers game along with a bunch of other positional / timing flags. That is pretty much unheard of, on a Belichick team, and not a subjective stat. Brady certainly would help eliminate some of those, certainly the delay of game that occurred a little later.
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