FanPost

Why 12's shouldn't be concerned about the NFL's increased scrutiny of defensive holding

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The NFL recently announced it would instruct its referees and umpires to pay more attention to illegal contact and defensive holding penalties. Much like the targeting of defenseless receiver rule, I think this will quickly blow over as teams coach differently and players adjust to a different level of sensitivity.

Two years ago, the Seahawks were getting a lot of personal fouls under the new helmet contact rules, as Seattle had a reputation for physical play and illegal hits. But coaching and player adjustments, with many Seahawks' requested NFL reviews of penalties, led to the league noticing that Seahawk players changed the way they approached the game. Now many of Seattle's players get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to physical hits on defenseless players. See Kam's somewhat high but definitely legal hit on Demaryious Thomas in the Super Bowl, for example. Two years ago that would have drawn a flag, this year no.

I predict a similar fate to the new narratives of "rampant abuse of the rules" and a "mugging on every play".

As far as "a penalty on every play", a very nice film analysis by Jason Lisk of the divisional and NFCCG games for the Seahawks showed that there was no remotely questionable contact on 79% of pass defense plays. So on 4 out of 5 plays, the secondary was 100% clean. Of the remaining plays, there was a mix of definite penalties and questionable contact (could be interpreted as contact initiated by WR, incidental contact, hand checking without clear impediment). That's not really rampant abuse, and while it's probably higher than most other teams, the median for the league is probably closer to 15% than it is to 5%.

A WSJ analysis made reasonable statistical estimates, but failed to provide a control group for other teams, and tainted the data with very misleading comments from officials, players, and coaches who accused the team of rampant abuse, multiple infractions on every play, and a narrative that they do so because the "refs won't call everything". The article is written in a way that seems to suggest the statistics validate the narrative, and is used as evidence by niners fans critics of the Seahawks defense.

In their analysis, a former college official reviewed five randomly selected games and prorated their findings to a full season. They estimated that Seattle, over 16 games, got away with 26 uncalled penalties in the secondary (illegal contact, def holding, DPI).

Let's take the estimate of missed penalties at face value as we have no basis with which to contest it (unless someone wants to do a film review themselves). The author continues as if the data support the narrative, but fails to look at what 26 missed penalties really means. Lisk, in his article, points out that the Seahawks faced approximately 600 pass plays on the season; thus, with their 52 total penalties (called + uncalled) on 600 pass defense plays over the course of the season, the Seahawks are committing penalties on only about 9.1% of pass plays. That means the Seahawks secondary played "clean" on 91% of pass plays. That's one of every 11 pass plays, or about 1 every 3 drives. That rate is a far cry from the narrative we fans are inundated with from the haters.

It's useful to note that the Lisk article includes all questionable contact in its 21% estimate and that the WSJ article only includes definite missed penalties in its arriving at my 9% estimate (WSJ missed penalties + called penalties). The truth of the matter is almost certainly somewhere in between the two analyses.

Likely, under the new scrutiny, the Seahawks will be penalized more frequently - as will every other team. But, as with every other aspect of Seahawks' football, I expect excellent coaching and intense attention to detail by the players. With four preseason games to re-set their thresholds, I'm gonna bet the secondary is able to decrease the effect of the increased scrutiny, and publicly prove wrong the narrative of a hold on every play. With Carroll at the helm, does anyone expect less?