The last thing the heavily penalized Ravens needed coming into this game with the 49ers is an officiating crew with an itchy trigger finger.
As our 1-4 luck would have it, the Ravens get John Parry’s crew this week. And they love the dirty laundry.
Officiating Crew: John Parry (referee), Mark Pellis (umpire), Greg Bradley (head linesman), Jabir Walker (field judge), Perry Paganelli (back judge), Greg Gautreaux (side judge), Mark Perlman (line judge)
The Ravens Penalty Woes
There’s no denying it- the Ravens have major issues in the penalty department. In last week’s game against the Browns, the Ravens managed to rack up double digit penalties for the 3rd time in 5 games, and just missed their 3rd game with over 100 penalty yards. And while this offers a mere (but dark) snapshot of how penalty-prone the Ravens are, their league-wide rankings provide even more doom and gloom for the boys from Baltimore.
To put it plain and simple? That’s really bad.
Looking at the breakdown by penalty type, we can see the penalties aren’t limited to one or two particular calls, but the trends are quite obvious.
There’s a glaring amount of defensive penalties for holding, DPI, and illegal contact which, given the anemic state of the secondary, makes a ton of sense. And while it seems there are far less personal foul penalties (which include roughing the passer), those fouls seem to be made at the most inconvenient times, and are equally detrimental to the team’s success.
(One bright spot worth noting: in the last 2 games, the Ravens have not committed a single DPI or defensive holding penalty. Seriously!)
One would think that the Ravens can’t withstand this rate, and that things should eventually turn around for the team. After all, they did only draw 3 flags in Week 1 at Denver and 4 in week 4 at Pittsburgh…
The Officials
As much as I’d like to hope the Ravens turn things around this week, I honestly don’t foresee it.
Why? The officiating crew isn’t going to have it.
Here’s how Parry’s crew stacks up against the NFL average and the Ravens in terms of penalties per team in Weeks 1 through 5.
We can see that Week 4 aside, John Parry’s crew has called more than the league average in penalties in every week. On top of that, we can also see how drastically high the Ravens are in 3 of those 5 weeks.
So taking a team with a heavy inclination to draw penalties and couple it with a crew that feels the need to throw constant flags, and what do we get? Likely a disaster for the Ravens.
Delving deeper, here’s the breakdown of penalties by type for Parry’s crew.
Taking the Ravens penalty bugaboos (defensive holding/PI/contact) and comparing it Parry’s tendencies, we can only assume that there will be a fair share of these calls being made against Baltimore on Sunday, as Parry’s 2nd most frequent called penalty is for DPI/Holding/Illegal Contact on the defense.
On the other hand, Parry’s tendency to call offensive holding (minimum 4 O-Holds per game, with a total of SEVENTEEN in the past 2 games!) may not be an issue for Baltimore, who has only committed 10 total offensive holds in 5 games (2 per game).
Overall? Expect a flag fest, and not one in the favor of the Ravens.
