Last week’s broadcast crew summed up the Ravens season in one sentence.
“He’s up to his eyeballs in bad calls throughout this 2015 season and it’s starting to boil over.”
-Steve Beuerlein on John Harbaugh
While John Harbaugh’s frustration is 100% understandable from an officiating standpoint, it appears this week’s crew should be able to keep that blood pressure in check, as Walt Coleman comes to town for Sunday’s showdown between the grounded Ravens and the high flying Seahawks.
Officiating Crew: Walt Coleman (referee), Tony Michalek (umpire), Jerry Bergman (head linesman), Boris Cheek (field judge), Rich Martinez (back judge), Jon Lucivansky (side judge), Kevin Codey (line judge)
Walt Coleman’s Crew
Many will forever remember Walt Coleman for the infamous Tuck Rule play.
And for those who were born after 2002, here’s the Tuck Rule in a nutshell:Â Tom Brady fumbled in a playoff game that would’ve sealed the deal for the Raiders, except Walt Coleman reviewed the play, enforced the Tuck Rule, the Patriots won in overtime and went on to win their first Super Bowl* as part of the Brady/Belichick evil empire.
It was easy to pin it on Walt Coleman at the time, as he made the official call after his review; however the rule was stated clear as day, and Walt was simply following the book.
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As far as I’m concerned, Walt gets a A in my book for enforcing the rule as written. Can’t blame an official for a bad rule, right?
Back to present day, Walt Coleman’s crew is coming into this weekend’s Bird Bash fresh off of their 2nd bye week of the season.
Looking at the penalties enforced by Walt Coleman’s crew in the 2015 season, their breakout appears to show a pretty fair distribution by penalty type.
Adding another layer to this crew’s critique, by taking the most frequently assessed penalties in the NFL versus the frequency of those same calls by Walt Coleman’s crew, we can get a true sense of how this officiating crew stacks up in comparison to the overall officiating around the league.
A little higher here… a little lower there… overall, they seem to be right in line.
Looking ahead to Sunday’s showdown, the only real concern I would have from an officiating standpoint is the disparity in calls between offense and defense.
There’s quite a drop off after the False Start and Offensive Holding calls, despite coming in right around the league average for each. Delving deeper, the high counts become slightly more alarming when you look at the trend: False Starts & Offensive Holds were scarce when the season started; however Coleman’s crew has called 3 or more of each type of penalty for the past 5 games.
Mixed Bag Results for the Ravens
Looking at the season as a whole, the Ravens still remain one of the more penalized teams in the league. Their 90 accepted penalties are tied for the 9th most in the NFL (ironically tied with Seattle), and their 853 total penalty yards puts them just inside the top five.
Looking at specific penalties, the Ravens currently lead the NFL in DPI (11) & Unnecessary Roughness (10) calls as well, while Jimmy Smith leads all DB’s in the NFL with 20.1 yards per penalty.
YIKES.
Looking at the same top-6 penalties in the NFL that we used in assessing Coleman’s crew, we see the Ravens, sans False Starts, sit above the league average across the board.
Despite all of the doom and gloom, there is a faint glimmer of hope shining through.
Despite leading the league in DPI, the Ravens defense has only committed such an offense in the past 2 games, which is a positive turn for a secondary constantly being shuffled around due to injuries.
And speaking of the secondary, despite all of their penalties as a unit, Will Hill leads the pack with 6 penalties, which ranks him 20th among all DB’s in the NFL- not great, but surely not one of the worst offenders either.
(Jimmy Smith with 5 and Webb with 4 penalties for good measure)
There’s also something to be said about the team’s ability to play a clean game the past 2 weeks, with only 5 penalties (36 yards) in Miami last week, and 7 against the Rams the week before (50 yards). The Ravens have now had 5 or less accepted penalties in 3 games this year, and 50 or less penalties yards in 6 contests. Taking this into consideration, it almost appears the Ravens take penalties with a ‘Go Big or Go Home’ mentality.
The Bad Guys
The Seahawks come into this matchup with the same amount of accepted penalties as Baltimore.
The breakdown however, differs drastically from Baltimore’s allocation.
While Baltimore has a knack for DPI and Defensive Holding calls, the Seahawks see these calls far less frequently. In turn, the Seahawks are much more inclined to be smacked with an O-Hold or False Start than Baltimore.
One area where the Seahawks and Ravens see eye to eye is in the Unnecessary Roughness department, where the Ravens commit 0.83 infractions per game, and Seattle 0.75 of their own.
What to Expect
With Seattle’s stingy defense matching up against a Ravens O-Line on the mend, I expect to see plenty of clean play with these units on the field (and not much play in total, with 3 and outs aplenty).
On the other side of the ball, the Ravens heavily penalized defense matches up with a heavily penalized Seahawks offense. This is where I expect to see many of the flags being thrown. The Seahawks knack for jumping early will set them back all day; however, the Ravens insatiable need to hold downfield will offset those long yardage situations for Seattle.
As for overall penalties, Coleman’s crew should be able to keep this game in check. I’d say somewhere in the 7-9 range for each team should be about right for this matchup.
That is, unless the Ravens let their ‘Go Big or Go Home’ mantra take over.
