Buffalo Rumblings
‘Round these parts, the head of the officiating crew for New Orleans Saints at Buffalo Bills has a special name. Yes’m and yessir! ‘Round here he’s know as Land. Effing. Clark.
Now I wanna make something crystal clear. I’m not opposed to calling out shoddy officiating (I called for Shawn Hochuli to be given the Hugo Cruz treatment after a game once). To this point, I have never accused Land. Effing. Clark of poorly officiating a game or being biased. Nosir and no’m,
Land. Effing. Clark got his name ‘round these parts because every time he calls a Bills game there’s always something just absolutely wild and kooky. In that regard, Land. Effing. Clark’s streak remains unbroken.
This is bad. Like… BAD, bad. The league averages have remained stable but the two teams went topsy turvy. It was mentioned during the broadcast that Buffalo had been very good at avoiding flags this season while New Orleans had been very heavily penalized. Ha ha ha! Fun. The weirdness associated with a Clark game is off to a great start.
To be fair, I did point out how a clean game from Buffalo this season was the thing that felt out of whack with McDermott’s era of coaching. The Bills having a slew of flags and an occasional spike isn’t necessarily something new to us.
Now this is a shock though. When you’re about 50% higher than the average amount in count, you don’t expect to be a tiny bit under in yards. They add in another 25 yards for those impacted by flag, but even that’s not crazy high considering the number of flags. The quick conclusion, which we’ll test further, is that Buffalo had a lot of flags with little overall impact. The Clark weirdness continues unabated.
As a heads up, when flags on the Bills are voluminous, it’s not a bad idea for me to see if they’re legitimate or not since I know I’ll be asked. Cutting to the chase for the Saints, they made it very easy on Land. Effing. Clark’s crew. All four were pretty clear. To start off our quick thoughts, kicking short of the landing zone is a standard flag.
The offensive holding by Ugo Amadi negated one yard of a return in addition to the 10 yards for the flag itself. Nothing wild really, but since we’ll have more to dissect when it comes to Buffalo let’s point something out now. League wide, special teams penalties make up 16% of the total. We’re at 50% for the Saints.
Wait. Make that 75%. The roughing the kicker was the single worst individual flag in the game, which I think we all intuited watching. Assessed as 15 yards, for the Harm formula each down also counts. For negating a punt, I treat it as a turnover and assess four downs at 1.0 Harm each.
Spencer...
