Let’s address the elephant in the room; C.J. Gardner-Johnson’s disqualification. Both the DQ and suspension are completely warranted in my opinion, and for all the people who are saying we should cut they guy loose; I’m not opposed to that in the least (though I would defer to the locker room in his case). A lot of penalties are problematic behavior, but this stands out to me if you care about my soapbox for a moment (if not, check out the charts and fun stuff below).
Most penalties are truly “crap happens” events. High speed sport with a lot of complexities. Things happen. Throwing a punch, getting in a person’s face, and similar flags between the whistles are inherently more intentional. That applies to spitting as well. Perhaps doubly so. I don’t want to dismiss throwing a punch, but on some level in a sport as violent as football, it’s almost understandable that there’s an instinct to throw a punch or shove someone. I just don’t see that same instinctual aspect for spitting. It could be if you’ve done it a lot I suppose, but that isn’t exactly any better is it?
There’s also the cultural aspect, with just about everyone agreeing how revolting it is. Put differently, it’s an act known to be shocking. That’s the whole point of it. Gardner-Johnson isn’t the worst person to ever wear the Bills uni, but this action was pretty bad. Now for your regularly scheduled penalty recap!
After the data-entry fest from last week, I’ll take average in a heartbeat. Both teams were right at the mark and from this chart, there’s really no significant separation between Buffalo and Las Vegas. I haven’t done a league average update in awhile and this might be a good time. Through six weeks, per team per game, the officials are tossing 1.35 more flags and assessing 1.25 more than last season. Now this should come down some, but I’m not super confident they’ll get back down to 2025 levels.
Similarly, there’s about ten more yards per team each game this season too. I’ll reiterate this gap should close some, but maybe not 10 yards worth. As for this game, The Bills are a little elevated compared to the league and the raiders, but nothing too crazy.
The Raiders just inched over the bad line with their seven flags, accumulating 11.0 Harm during the game. Looking at just the classifications, it makes some sense. You have the face mask call which starts at 1.5 for the 15 yards. Defensive pass interference can escalate quickly. In this case, Hezekiah Masses was called for a 13-yarder which also gave up a free down.
Most of the stories here are pretty similar, with nothing too extravagant. Caleb Rogers was called for holding. That was ten yards assessed, an eight-yard pass to Bowers negated, and one down lost.
Treydan Stukes was called for defensive holding, which starts with a five-yard assessment. Stukes’ flag came on third down and gave Buffalo two free chances.
There’s one last fun thing which is more of a quirk. The false start on Linderbaum was not half the distance to the goal. They were on the Buffalo 13-yard line. Once in awhile, a flag has a rounding error on the play by play due to the spot being not quite exactly on the indicated yard-line. This may have prevented more points for the Raiders. Now faced with 4th & 5 instead of 4th & 1, the Raiders kicked a field goal rather than go for it and potentially convert for a fresh set of downs.
Despite having quite a few more flags last week, the Bills exceeded the Harm rating in this game largely off the back of an offensive holding call from O’Cyrus Torrence. We’ll get back to that in a moment with my only remaining note on it for the moment being that it’s always fun to see a single flag really screw up the chart’s scale.
That one flag is SOOOO out of whack, it’s hard to realize that Davison Igbinosun’s defensive holding flag is right up there with the worst of what was called on the Raiders. Igbinosun’s holding call was five yards and gave up two free downs.
The defensive pass interference from Dee Alford was called for 22 yards and one down and was higher than any flag Las Vegas had on them all day. But it’s nothing compared to the one on O’Cyrus Torrence. For the formula lovers:
* 1.0 Harm for the ten assessed yards.
* 1.8 Harm for wiping out an 18-yard gain from Dawson Knox.
* The play scored a touchdown, and that’s treated as 7.0 Harm.
* The play was on fourth down and there was room to gain the first without the TD so I hold them accountable for that too. That’s 3.0 Harm for the downs they lost.
Is it fair to Torrence accountable for all that? I think so. This literally took points off the board, which are never guaranteed to come back onto it. The Bills settled for a field which means this flag literally wiped four points out, never to be seen again…
See More:
* [Buffalo Bills Analysis](/buffalo-bills-analysis)
* [Buffalo Bills Opinion](/buffalo-bills-opinion)