Buffalo Bills at Pittsburgh Steelers penalty flag analysis

If you’re like me, and heaven help you if you are, you found the penalties called by Alex Kemp and his crew to be quite annoying. As aggravating as the yellow laundry was, it barely proved an annoyance. with neither team impacted all that much by flags. Buffalo in particular was not held back in any meaningful way by the officiating.

It doesn’t sound like I’m giving you much reason to read this article this week, so to get you to keep going I’m going to do something a bit unusual for me and grab a video to breakdown a non-call.

Standard and Advanced Metrics

Penalty Counts

Looking at our first “usual” measure, the Buffalo Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers are both right around average, though the Steelers fared a little better. In a very atypical turn of events there were zero offset or decline penalties. If Alex Kemp announced it, it was assessed. Well, except for that facemask that New York corrected before it was assessed, but somehow after it was called on the field. Weeeeeee!

Penalty Yards

This is why deep-dive stats are important. The yardage for both teams is within striking distance of average like the counts, but in the opposite direction with Buffalo looking better than Pittsburgh. This strongly suggests that Pittsburgh actually had a worse day with flags, but we’ll discuss it more below. The Bills didn’t impact any yardage on top of what was assessed, and Pittsburgh had a scant seven added in.

Penalty Harm

Buffalo Bills

Look at all these boring flags. Offensive tackle Alec Anderson started things off strong with two false starts, one on each of the Bills’ first two drives. Neither were good things, but it’s also hard to say it killed either drive. The interception was the bigger deal on the first drive. On drive two, the loss of two on first down was likely worse than a false start, as it killed a down along with the loss.

Also on the second drive was the delay-of-game flag. Quarterback Josh Allen tried to get the defense to jump around midfield to try to get Buffalo five yards closer on 4th & 10 where maybe they’d have gone for it, or tried a long field goal. Instead they got five yards more space to punt, which didn’t matter because it was a touchback anyway.

The kickoff-out-of-bounds flag was explained well on the broadcast and was a good penalty as it allowed the 15 yards from the Cam Heyward taunting flag to be assessed, essentially netting Buffalo a free 10 yards on the kickoff.

Safety Sam Franklin Jr. was called for holding on a punt return. There’s not much else to the story really on this one.

Last but not least is the curious case of defensive end A.J. Epenesa’s unsportsmanlike conduct call. Epenesa smacked the ball out of wide receiver DK Metcalf’s hands after a catch. You might recall defensive end Javon Solomon doing something similar against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but getting flagged for delay of game.

I’m not really sure why Epenesa’s was called for unsportsmanlike conduct except that perhaps it was interpreted as abusive in some manner, with that word being in the unsportsmanlike conduct examples. A good guess might be that they felt Epenesa was trying to punch Metcalf and not the ball. It was an easily avoidable flag, but again ultimately a nuisance only as the drive ended soon after thanks to a cornerback Christian Benford’s interception.

The Bills had a total of 6.0 Harm, which is easily on the right side of our bad day cutoff of 10.0 Harm.

Pittsburgh Steelers

This is definitely more interesting than the Bills’ chart, but with an overall Harm of 8.4 in the game, let’s just call it “mildly interesting” as there wasn’t much impact. Many of these were pretty straightforward too. Linebacker Payton Wilson giving people the business in a pile was half the distance to the goal and pretty easy to spot. Safety Sebastian Castro’s holding call on special teams was pretty typical and ho hum as far as flags go. Defensive tackle Cameron Heyward’s taunting call was well covered on the broadcast, so there’s no point revisiting that one. Similarly, defensive tackle Esezi Otomewo was called for unnecessary roughness, which was well shown too, and gave up one free down in addition to the 15 yards. There’s hardly any intrigue at all, is there?

Well there were two points of intrigue, and for the sake of time I put them both in one video. It’ll lead off with DK Metcalf and his unsportsmanlike-conduct call. I didn’t recall that one being explained on the broadcast, so I went and looked. The replay doesn’t give much after the play, but technically the touchdown has been scored before Metcalf’s block in the back so that’s the best guess as to what drew the flag. Since it’s a dead-ball foul, it escalated to a 15-yarder. Assuming my hunch is correct.

I think what you’ll really want to discuss is the no-call on Josh Allen’s slide, which you might not like what I have to say on it.

Before you come after me in the comments, I want to be very clear that if it were called I think that’s the right call too. My conclusion on this is that I would place it in the gray area for flags, and when a flag is in the gray area I’m at peace with the world either way.

Here’s the rule on this, verbatim from the book:

“A defender must pull up when a runner begins a slide or dive. This does not mean that all contact by a defender is illegal. If a defender has already committed himself, and the contact is unavoidable, it is not a foul unless the defender makes forcible contact into the head or neck area of the runner with the helmet, shoulder, or forearm, or commits some other act that is unnecessary roughness.”

It’s 100% true that linebacker Patrick Queen made contact with his shoulder, so that’s a check. Did he hit Josh Allen in the “head or neck area?” That’s a little less clear as it was shoulder-to-shoulder contact, but it wouldn’t be the first time a shot to the shoulder was seen as “neck area.” I point out a couple mitigating factors. Queen did turn his head to avoid contact, which is often seen as meeting the spirit of trying to “pull up.” I also point out how little time he had to react and change his body position once it’s clear the slide starts. Is the contact “unavoidable?” This is a gray area for me.

Going against my own point, it can often be anticipated that a quarterback might slide. Then again, Josh Allen also likes to plow through guys, so that might lead to hesitation on the part of a defender. I’ll also point out space. Queen didn’t really move forward all that much, basically just lowering his body to the ground. Put differently, he’s not stepping into the hit and he’s sure as heck not launching at Allen. But again, he is lowering his shoulder, so there’s some momentum he’s adding.

That said though, look how far Allen traveled with the slide. How far would he have gone if Queen wasn’t existing in the spot he was sliding into? Allen was moving pretty fast. Most of the momentum is from Allen himself, not Queen.

Add it all up, and if you still think it’s a clear flag I’m not going to argue with you. All I’m saying is that I see why the refs interpreted it as a no-call. Most importantly, I don’t see anything malicious from Queen so I won’t condemn the man. This also seemed to be a rallying point for the team, so while I’m okay calling it the gray area where flag or no flag is fine by me, there’s an argument to be made the no-call was better for Buffalo as it allowed them to channel their anger. Yellow laundry might have taken some of the edge off that.