Replacement officials in the NFL have been mildly
controversial lately. From players to coaches to numerous columnists, it
appears that the call for the real refs is universal.
Several of my usual reads have already analyzed various
aspects of the situation. At advancednflstats.com, Brian Burke took a look at home
field advantage and concluded that the numbers for this season are not
conclusively different from the long-term trend. Bill Barnwell comes at it from
more of an “integrity
of the game” approach that a great
number
of
columnists are
favoring.
Are they really
that bad?
Year
|
Avg Penalties
per Week (1-3)
|
2005
|
237.3
|
2003
|
233.0
|
2004
|
218.33
|
2012
|
218.30
|
2010
|
208.7
|
2011
|
207.7
|
2002
|
203.0
|
2009
|
200.3
|
2008
|
191.3
|
2006
|
188.7
|
2007
|
182.0
|
Stats-wise, any time I see this kind of consensus opinion
I want to look into it and see what’s up. Through three weeks, the replacement
refs are averaging 218 penalty calls per week. This puts them comfortably in
range of the past ten seasons when compared against the first three weeks of
each. When compared against the full-season numbers, 2012 looks terrible with
only 2004 and 2005 above 200. But this is because the replacements have so far
participated only in 16 game weeks while full seasons have several weeks with
13 or 14 games to accommodate byes. Penalties per week also tend to go down
slightly throughout the season even accounting for byes.
So if they aren’t calling more penalties, what is the
problem? The 2012 season is seeing more penalties than 2011, about 0.5 extra
calls per game, but that doesn’t seem like enough to cause this outcry.