Really? The fact Burfict is a headhunting asshole of the highest order and should be kicked out of the league means the Steelers aren’t dirty?
That’s some impressive Steeler fan logic right there.
This may be shocking, but not all penalties are caught in real time. Burfict is already toeing the line for suspension a whole two games after coming off one. Since we’ve agreed Burfict is a pile of shit, can we stop crying about how the “Stealers are so mean and commit so many penalties that they’re called for the most but they commit even more even though they rank middle of the pack league-wide unless you only look at one specific violent penalty and ignore all others and waaaaaaaaaaah”?
That you still feel the need to insist I’m a Steeler fan when there are multiple threads where I discuss my fandom is obtuse at best.
This entire side discussion started because someone pointed out Vontaze Burfict is a piece of shit, and certain Bengals fans got pissy about it, resorting to crying about Steelers players from when football was allowed to be more violent.
Nobody is “crying”. And “when football was allowed to be more violent” ran through just last year.
So barring a monster comeback here Pittsburgh loses no ground whatsoever on a bye week. I’m loving this.
Its only 3 years if you count that they have the most this year through 6 games. We’ll see if it evens out in 2018. In 2015 Baltimore led the league, and the Steelers 7th most in the league.
Also, kinda weird, but the Steelers have 6 unnecessary roughness penalties against them this year, and 4 of them came in the Tampa Bay game. I don’t remember that game being dirty or violent, and i cant remember the penalties specifically, but I think 2 of them were ticky-tack roughing the passer calls (which notoriously went both ways in that game). The other two were on special teams oddly enough, but I’m struggling to find video of them.
Oops! my mistake, I thought the roughing the passer penalties were lumped in with the unnecessary roughness penalties in the penalty stats, but they are not!
Still weird, the Steelers have:
6 unnecessary roughness penalties, 4 were in the Tampa Bay game
3 roughing the passer penalties, 2 were in the Tampa Bay game
All together, the Steelers had 13 penalties in that game. Seems weird in a game they were winning 30-10 at halftime.
Last penalty stat (for now) the Steelers have had 58 penalties called against them and have been the beneficiary of 52 penalties. They are currently tied with Cleveland and Kansas City (???) for the most penalized team in football (though to be fair Cleveland and KC have both played 7 games, while the Steelers have only played 6)
Because of shitty enforcement, I would say that the amount of penalties called is only loosely related to the number of penalties/dirty play actually committed. The Steelers are one of the NFL’s golden teams that almost always gets the benefit of the doubt for officiating, which suggests that if they do actually lead in those sorts of penalties they probably lead by a larger margin in actual dirty play.
In 2015, the Steelers had 11 Unnecessary Roughness penalty, tying them with Seattle for 4th in the league.
When you lead the league 2.5 years running and you’ve haven’t been outside the top half in over 5 years, that’s enough consistency to draw a pretty valid conclusion. YMMV.
Oh right. The NFL Deep State angle. I guess I can’t argue that one.
I’m hoping the officiating illuminati has passed down the word to this weekend’s crew so the Steelers can beat the Browns. I’m sure they weren’t happy with the 10 penalties called (9 accepted) against the Steelers in the 2nd half & OT in the week one tie.
The idea that the NFL has meetings and decides who is going to win games ahead of time and therefore skews the officiating in that direction is one extreme end of it.
But on the opposite end, the idea that the NFL fairly officiates everyone and doesn’t allow some sort of unconscious bias to influence them is the other extreme.
I think there’s a bias towards treading lightly when officiating good teams, and one against chronically bad teams. After all, the good teams just do things right, and the bad teams don’t, and it makes sense to be harder on the bad teams - on some unconscious level. So teams that are chronically good tend to receive light handed officiating and teams that tend to be chronically bad get screwed.
There are other factors, I’m sure. You probably get a lot more criticism when you make a bad call that makes the Patriots lose and everyone is outraged, but if you make a bad call that makes the Browns lose, who gives a shit. Edit: As a concrete example, remember when they New Refs fucked the packers a few years back with the end zone catch thing? More egregious shit has happened to the Browns this season a few times in game winning/losing situations without nearly the backlash.
I think there are a lot of subtle factors at work, but I do think teams like the Steelers and Patriots receive light officiating and teams like the Browns or Lions receive heavy handed officiating, without necessarily anyone having gone to a meeting and declared that to be policy.
Although I do think it’s possible the NFL has a grudge over what Cleveland did to get a new team and retain their records, and also things like Bottlegate, and may specifically target them for fucking over. They certainly did during the process of creating the expansion Browns that set them down the path of being dysfunctional for at least the first few years.
Edit: Or think of this way - star players tend to get officiated much more lightly than run of the mill players no one knows. Does that mean the NFL sat down one day and said “okay, we’re not going to call much OPI against Antonio Brown”? No, probably not. But through a series of unconscious biases I think most people would agree that star players get treated differently. No one would be allowed to touch Tom Brady in the way that Baker Mayfield gets hit sometimes. So if we can agree that there are reasons that star players get a different officiating treatment, is it so hard to believe that “star” teams do too?
Ahh, I think you’re including offsetting penalties, which my numbers excluded.
My numbers showed that in 2015 they had 10 (accepted, not offsetting) good for 7th place (and btw 19 teams had at least 7).
And yet in 2018 the least penalized team is the 1-5 NY Giants. And the 10 least penalized teams also includes:
5-2 New England
3-3 Chicago
3-4 Tennesee
4-2 Carolina
4-2 Washington
5-1 New Orleans
7-0 LA
1-5 Oakland
3-3 Detroit
So despite what you “think”, that’s 5 teams with winning records, and 5 teams at .500 or below.
Also, it’s weird that you mention Antonio Brown in a post about star players getting preferential treatment when there was no penalty called last week when Burfict tried to break his neck.
I remember when they were champions the Seahawks got a lot of penalties. And they were earned; the pass rushers for example got called offsides frequently because they really tried to get the jump and time snap counts to get pressure on the QB and that aggressiveness backfired often. Pete Carroll (head coach) publicly said he didn’t mind getting so many penalties because to him it was a consequence of that aggressiveness they strived for. And it’s not like these were personal fouls and such, they were usually technical calls. Actually the Seahawks stress tackling safety and even put out safety videos to teach other teams proper tackling.
My point is though that sometimes you can be heavily penalized as a winning team because the style of play you have leads to getting lots of penalties. It’s not always the case that “good” teams get penalized less.
So, after the bye week, requiring no effort whatsoever from the Steelers, they currently sit atop the AFC North. I’d like to thank the other three teams in the division for laying some serious eggs this weekend and invite them to continue doing so from now on.
Or, if you get called on a lot of penalties for the same things over and over, chances are you’re committing those same offenses far more often and just getting away with it.
I think that’s the case for every team. I expect everyone gets called for a fraction of the penalties they actually commit. The refs can’t see everything. And clever players know how to get away with stuff.
Yes - the Steelers and Packers are the NFL’s equivalent of the 2000-2002 Lakers.
Trailing shortly behind them are the Patriots and Cowboys.
Starting from a false premise and using that to build upon doesn’t make it any less false. God knows I’d love it if they got all the calls. Alas, it’s simply not true. Jesse James and every Steelers fan in the world can attest to that.
Oh, right, they didn’t get that call because the Patriots get all the calls. I forgot how this argument goes for a second. Please forgive me, I won’t let it happen again. :rolleyes:
I would say that the Patriots are the recipient of the most referee favoritism, yes.
Or, perhaps, the reason that bad teams get flagged so often is because they’re bad. If the players were good they wouldn’t have to commit so many penalties and their abilities would be reflected in the standings with wins.
Think about that for a while and get back to me when it sinks in.