Buffalo Rumblings
The Buffalo Bills squeaked out a win over the lowly Cleveland Browns, with mistakes marring the matchup. Some of those mistakes came in the form of flags but for these gaffes there wasn’t much impact on the game, which is good news for Buffalo. They couldn’t really afford anything more going wrong.
They also did me the favor of making things really easy this week for analysis, so that’s cool too. Let’s take a look!
Our first chart of the day is a mirror match with both teams have the exact same number of assessed and total flags. Even better, in both measures the two teams are below league average — which is good new for me as it means less data to look at, plays to review, etc. It also helps justify the entire premise of this series, as the mirror match won’t hold on for very long.
The left side of the graphic shows the assessed yards, and the case I believe most reasonable people would make on this is that even though there’s a gap between the two teams forming, it’s pretty minor. Based on the traditional metrics, you would conclude the two teams had a very even day.
The right-hand side is the beginning of the advanced stats. In this case, we add yards negated or otherwise impacted by penalties. I say “otherwise impacted” because in Buffalo’s case only one penalty impacted yards in addition to assessed, and it’s the rare instance of a negative outcome. I’ll point it out below. Furthermore, the Browns had more yards impacted than assessed, making a gigantic gap between the two teams in this measure.
I won’t spend much time dissecting the Browns’ penalties because as is tradition, opponent flags are always deserved because they’re wicked, awful beings who deserve all these and more. Most of these are pretty ho-hum to be fair.
Offensive tackle KT Leveston Jr. had a rough day, accounting for three of the six flags. The two false starts were the yards only, of course. The offensive holding was the usual 10 yards but also wiped out a five-yard run by quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
Speaking of Sanders, I don’t believe I need to discuss the intentional grounding flag except for the formula. The flag cost the Browns 14 yards and one down. For the formula, if you’re new to this measure in Harm, each yard counts as 0.1 Harm and each down counts as 1.0 Harm.
Center Luke Wypler had the worst flag of the day, with 6.0 Harm. The flag was called for 10 yards but wiped out a 40-yard gain as well as a first down from second, or one down negated. That’s 1.0 + 4.0 + 1.0 = 6.0 Harm. Spoiler alert: This single flag had a greater Harm rating than all the Bills’ flags combined.
The one flag I didn’t mention was the...
