The Buffalo Bills hosted the Kansas City Chiefs and hung on for a hard-fought win this past Sunday. Along the way they had to work through a couple of iffy calls from referee Carl Cheffers and his crew.
Now don’t get wrong as I tend to choose my words carefully. Cheffers didn’t straight up blow any calls, and there’s zero hint of bias in the flags thrown. I’m going to stand by “iffy” though.
Standard and Advanced Metrics
Penalty Counts
I’m going to do something I rarely do up here in standard metrics: Real analysis. This is the usually reserved for some opening fluff, but not today. The fairness/bias of officials is a constant concern with these two teams, with fans of course divided over who’s getting “screwed” on the regular.
Neither team had all that many flags against them, but if you were looking for bias, it’s easy to say that Kansas City only had three flags. There’s a reason I look at thrown flags or “true” ones rather than just the assessed though. The Chiefs had two penalties declined, but remember that flags are only declined if something equally or more terrible occurred on the play.
For Kansas City, an illegal formation was declined due to it being third down and quarterback Patrick Mahomes being unable to connect with wide receiver Xavier Worthy. A defensive holding was declined on 2nd & 7 when quarterback Josh Allen found tight end Dalton Kincaid for 12 yards.
What I’m getting at is that if you look at it from one lens, Kansas City looks like they were insulated from officiating. Swapping the lens shifts the perspective to suggest the opposite. Both realities are true, suggesting in totality that by volume, neither team had a real advantage.
Penalty Yards
Here, too, things look a bit lopsided toward favoring the Chiefs. Breaking things down by rates, the Bills had 10 yards lost per flag. Kansas City had 8.33, so not a huge difference.
Negated yards skew things against Buffalo, but remember that there’s more to flags than yards or even impacted or “true” yards, and Kansas City had two declined penalties where the biggest mistake on the field was something other than the flag.
Penalty Harm
Kansas City
I already discussed the two declined flags and honestly most of these are pretty boring for the penalty nerds. Wanya Morris’ holding flag was yards only for 1.0 Harm from the 10 yards on the penalty.
Jaylen Watson was called for defensive pass interference. The flag itself was only called for five yards, but occurring on second down it gave up one free down. For the formula, that’s 0.5 Harm on the yards and 1.0 Harm for the down for 1.5 Harm total.
Last but not least, Mahomes threw the ball into the dirt mid-way into the third quarter. With Mahomes under duress and the ball landing nowhere near a receiver, the officials conferred and eventually tossed a flag for intentional grounding. A few Chiefs fans in my section seemed to think the ball was tipped. The stadium replays didn’t show anything convincing. I went back and watched it from every angle and slow motion, and…
It was probably tipped. I don’t see anything conclusive. It’s likely the refs have better angles/feeds than I do so maybe they’d find something more concrete but the fact I had to work so hard to get to “probably tipped” is the best rationale for letting it stand as called on the field.
Kansas City had a very low 4.5 Harm total in the game. Essentially, flags were not a factor in the outcome.
Buffalo Bills
Cutting to the chase, with 6.0 Harm, there’s no reason to think the Bills were held back by flags either. To run down all four in chronological order…
Linebacker Dorian Williams was called for offensive holding on the opening kickoff, making it seem like we were in for a long night. That flag negated three yards of the return to go with the 10 assesses yards.
Safety Cole Bishop’s defensive holding was the yards only.
Running back Ty Johnson’s face mask call was also yards only.
Tight end Dawson Knox’s offensive holding was 10 yards from the refs. It also wiped out a seven-yard gain on 2nd & 3.
I know what you’re all thinking though. I called it an “iffy” game, which suggests some ref bias or tomfoolery at bare minimum. So let’s take a look.
Going through these in chronological order again…
Dorian Willams’ holding call was completely legitimate. Pretty easy to call honestly.
I don’t like Cole Bishop’s defensive holding call. I see contact, but nothing to suggest the receiver was impeded. This call seems iffy to me.
Speaking of iffy, I don’t see clear evidence of a facemask from Ty Johnson. It’s possible but I’m not loving the flag.
Dawson Knox’s holding call also seemed legit. The rule for holding prohibits turning, twisting, or jerking your opponent and Knox is definitely doing that last one.
With the flags being such a small part of the game and two being ticky-tack, why am I all about calling the officiating “iffy?” Two ticky-tack flags is half the total volume the Bills experienced. Over all, Cheffers and his crew had a rough go of it.