Buffalo Rumblings
I think it flew under the radar this week, so this is likely the first time you’re hearing that the Buffalo Bills beat the Baltimore Ravens on a last-second field goal booted off the foot of the oldest player to take the field in team history who was on the team for a grand total of three days at that point. That seems like a fun game, right?
Just wait until you hear about the penalties!
I promise there’s a really fun thing to discuss this week, but it’s not quite here yet. This section is pretty straightforward and most of these words are a glorified page break between this chart and the next chart. For any newcomers, “true” count adds in declined and/or offset penalties as they arise as it helps us analyze penalty tendencies. Anyway, on this chart you can see that Buffalo had a pretty
For the league-based stats, these are both considerably higher than how last year ended (6.4 count and 7.56 true count). As I’ve noted every year, the season always starts high and trickles down. That said, 2024 Week 1 started at 6.75 and 8.06 respectively. So yes, keep an eye on this year as we’re off to a higher start than last season.
Here’s our first interesting thing, but in the hopes of an enticing cliffhanger I won’t explain the why just yet. If you check any stat site anywhere you’ll see the Ravens with 51 penalty yards assessed, five off of what I did. I have a good reason for it, so more on that in a moment. For here, the narrative remains mostly the same. Baltimore was basically average, with Buffalo a bit ahead of the curve.
For new readers, the league does actually have top secret stats similar to my true yards, but they calculate less thoroughly than I like, which means I don’t have league data. True yards add in yards impacted by penalty. For example, if a holding call wipes out a big run, we hold the lost yardage against the offender as well. As you can see, Baltimore had no additional yards added in, whereas Buffalo catches right up with a few key flags adding in some chunks.
I’ve debated for years on which team to start with first since sports fans are a superstitious lot. Should I do home/visitor style? Do I give the courtesy of going first to the opponent? Bills first because we’re a Bills blog? Screw it! From now on no more agonizing on the decision. The less interesting discussion goes first to convince you to stick around to the end (and take advantage of recency bias in learners to make you more likely to leave with positive associations with my work).
The Bills are the more boring team here. We’ll run through the formula a couple times but that’s about it. With only...
