Penalty info through week three, Mace interview

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Childress
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I always feel that penalties are under-reported in the CFL and so I thought I should do my part to help fill the void. I've written up a blog on the penalties after week three and have put some penalties on our stats page.

Check it out here:

http://forums.cflhorsemen.ca/topic6632.html

We also interviewed Corey Mace yesterday. If you are a CFL junkie and want to get all you can, especially on a bye week...

http://forums.cflhorsemen.ca/post59482.html#p59482
TheLionKing
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Last week in the CFL the penalty flags were flying. In total between the four games played there were 110 penalties for 958 yards, which is the third-highest total in the last 20 years. Obviously, that is way too many penalties. It disrupts the flow of the game, extends the length of the game, and is flat out hard to watch.

However, it is one thing to simply complain about the flag-filled week. It's another to examine the calls, look at the reasons why they were made, and work towards finding solutions so it doesn't happen again. In conjunction with the league's head coaches, that is exactly what Glen Johnson, the league's Vice-President of Officiating, is currently working on. It is a process that will take some time for a couple reasons, the most important being that we are all learning a new culture in football where player safety is the focus. However, all the league stake holders are all in to work towards limiting the amount of penalties called, and the time it takes to call them.

Johnson has accumulated the numbers from last week and some from the first three weeks of the season, and they may surprise football fans. First, all of the penalties from last week have been reviewed and, of the 110 called, 93 of them were the correct call while only seven of them were debatable or questionable calls. Essentially, 94 per cent of the calls made last week were correct which according to Johnson is, "very close to the overall standards from the last few years."

These numbers are significant, because it is important to understand that fixing the problem of too many penalties does not just fall on the shoulders of the officials. The players and coaches are ultimately responsible, and are working with Johnson on a weekly basis to improve the situation. Johnson explained by pointing out that there are currently teams that have asked the league to make officials available for practices. "I talk to the coaches and we are working together to improve the situation on a weekly basis, in fact some teams have asked that we supply them refs at practice, which I think is an excellent idea, and can help the teams and our officials."

After three weeks this season penalties are up by 31 per cent overall, which is a huge jump. However, when you dig a little deeper into the numbers, we shouldn't be surprised. Of the 31 per cent increase this year, "player safety fouls," are leading the way. Penalties like unnecessary roughness, roughing the passer, face masking, and sportsmanship-related fouls like taunting are driving the increase. When you consider what is happening in North America when it comes to player safety in contact sports, we shouldn't be surprised that calls that are designed to protect the players, sometimes from themselves, are up dramatically. It is going to take time for players to understand what is a legal hit, and what is not, when they have trained their whole lives to hit a certain way, especially when we are talking about the hits on the quarterbacks.

So before we start chanting, "ref you suck," from the stands, remember that the Players' Association have negotiated player safety items into their new collective bargaining agreements and have made it a priority. It is the players who must change their behaviour, and better understand what is - and isn't - a legal hit, and play with more discipline. They voted it into their own agreements. For now, if the officials err, they will err on the side of protecting the players because that has been mandated by the league and the CFLPA.

Penalty-filled games make for long football games, and fans should know that the league is very aware of games extending too long and are working on improving that area as well. One concern is with regards to video review, and whether or not it is taking too long. No, this has nothing to do with the new rule to make pass interference a reviewable penalty - more on that in a minute. This is about being more efficient with the review process. Glen Johnson is even looking at possibly changing the mechanics to speed things up. "One thing that I am looking at is to possibly drop the part of the process where the official explains to the Referee what he saw which then gets relayed to the replay official." He went on to say, "that information is rarely helpful as the play is getting reviewed, we could save about 20 seconds per review." Twenty seconds would be significant when you consider that currently the average review is taking two minutes and 15 seconds. This however, according to Johnson, is skewed because of a few really long reviews this year that took five minutes. He said that reviews generally take about one minute and 30 seconds, which is close to the target. "The objective is to get them under two minutes and five minutes is not acceptable!"

It should also be noted that according to data from south of the border, NFL reviews on average take about three minutes, so shaving over a minute off that time will add up quickly. Johnson has reminded his refs that when replay was first introduced to the game there was a 90-second limit placed on the referee, and that decision didn't come from a replay office - it was made from under the hood at the park.

Now on the new rule involving the review of pass interference. After three weeks there have been five challenges of pass interference, and all five were on plays where there was no flag thrown. In other words coaches challenged that the call was missed. On two of those challenges the play was reviewed and it was determined by the command center that there was PI on the play and the no call on the field was overturned. It is a small sample size but Johnson, and the majority of the coaches in the league, feel the new rule change is, "going well," so far.

As for the timing of this particular challenge on average it takes about 20 seconds longer than other challengeable plays. So if it takes about one minute and 30 seconds for most challenges, then a PI call would take one minute and 50 seconds which is still under the target of two minutes. By the way both overturned PI challenges occurred in the end zone which is the area on the field that changes the outcome of games, and the calls ended up being correct. The purpose of this change was not to make PI more difficult, but to assist the officials who may have missed something blatant during live action, and in that regard the league and the coaches believe it is working so far.

When you break it all down, there is a fairly simple explanation as to why player safety type penalties are up, and that should correct itself over time. It is also important to understand that 94 per cent of the penalties called in the game are the correct call, so it is the coaches and players' responsibility to make the necessary corrections. And finally, all the stakeholders in the game are very aware that last week there were way too many penalties and are working together to make changes to make sure 110 flags in four games doesn't happen again.

Now let's get back to talking about football.

http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/story/?id=457323
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Sir Purrcival
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Well according to my math, 110 from 93 does not equal 7. So unless we are dealing with a typo, that translates not to 94% correct but more like 85%. That is a 15% error rate which is roughly double what the "overall standards" are. Also, some of those questionable calls are of the particularly damaging variety. Consider the 15 yards that come with a rough play call. That can change things in a hurry particularly if it was about to be 3rd down. Just ask the Roughriders how damaging the taunting call was. But more importantly, think about how the roughing call on I think it was Bighill might have been more damaging in the 1st half. One blown call of this variety can literally turn the tenor of a game 180 degrees.
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Sir Purrcival wrote:Well according to my math, 110 from 93 does not equal 7. So unless we are dealing with a typo, that translates not to 94% correct but more like 85%. That is a 15% error rate which is roughly double what the "overall standards" are. Also, some of those questionable calls are of the particularly damaging variety. Consider the 15 yards that come with a rough play call. That can change things in a hurry particularly if it was about to be 3rd down. Just ask the Roughriders how damaging the taunting call was. But more importantly, think about how the roughing call on I think it was Bighill might have been more damaging in the 1st half. One blown call of this variety can literally turn the tenor of a game 180 degrees.
Or the Elimimian penalty.... and so on and so on. There were plenty missed/poor calls that allowed possession to remain in drives that were otherwise stalled, not just in the BC game, but the biggest game of the week Winnipeg/Montreal. There are way too many calls of the phantom variety on the QB's, which has become a trend since last season, but to another degree this year.
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Sir Purrcival
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I knew there was another one that the commentators also mentioned. I couldn't go back and watch it on TSN because SHAW isn't part of their new TSNGO program which really sucks.
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Watching the last game , at first it seemed same old same old at riderville to me, watching some of the early lame penalties the Lions got , thinking it was the usual homer bias the Riders always seem to get at mosaic . But then the refs started calling the Riders too for stuff like holding and it actually started to even out somewhat for a change . For me , if it's a choice of call every thing or the bias we've seen the Riders enjoy in the past , I'll prefer the call every thing version any day . The difference in our last game was the Riders also got their share of penalties , for BC it was just the same old , and for BC that's a win. Rider O-line suddenly doesn't look that great when they are no longer allowed to hold as much as they like .
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Sir Purrcival wrote:I knew there was another one that the commentators also mentioned. I couldn't go back and watch it on TSN because SHAW isn't part of their new TSNGO program which really sucks.
That may have been the penalty on hitting the returner who was just in front of the goal line, he was about to take a knee, he was trying to gain yardage.
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Sir Purrcival
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Yes, that might have been it and the result was that the Riders instead of starting in the shadow of their own goal, got 15 yards of breathing space that they neither earned nor deserved. A possible big game changer at a point where there was still a lot of vying for advantage. When someone is down that is one thing but until they are down, they aren't. I remember a QB a few years ago (Flutie I think it was) that looked to be running out of bounds so the pursuing linebacker let up just a bit assuming he was going to continue out. Flutie, then proceeded to tiptoe down the sidelines for another 10 yards. It is the same issue with the QB slide. Until the QB starts the slide, you can't assume he is going to do it. I think there was another penalty in this Rider game for that where again it might have been Sol, who was already starting to dive towards the QB when Durant began to make his slide. I defy anyone who is launching themselves to then change direction when most of them is in midair. You can't just pull up.

By the way, did anybody see anything definitive in the Harris catch overturn? I didn't in any of the replays. That was a head scratcher as well.
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Sir Purrcival wrote:Yes, that might have been it and the result was that the Riders instead of starting in the shadow of their own goal, got 15 yards of breathing space that they neither earned nor deserved. A possible big game changer at a point where there was still a lot of vying for advantage. When someone is down that is one thing but until they are down, they aren't. I remember a QB a few years ago (Flutie I think it was) that looked to be running out of bounds so the pursuing linebacker let up just a bit assuming he was going to continue out. Flutie, then proceeded to tiptoe down the sidelines for another 10 yards. It is the same issue with the QB slide. Until the QB starts the slide, you can't assume he is going to do it. I think there was another penalty in this Rider game for that where again it might have been Sol, who was already starting to dive towards the QB when Durant began to make his slide. I defy anyone who is launching themselves to then change direction when most of them is in midair. You can't just pull up.

By the way, did anybody see anything definitive in the Harris catch overturn? I didn't in any of the replays. That was a head scratcher as well.
Yeah that was SolE on the QB slide hit for a RP, still got him while he was going down, and there are a few QB's that feint the slide for some extra yardage. On the Harris 'non catch', they could only assume that the ball was trapped, where the call on the field should have stood IMO. Same as the non TD by Charles, it was a 50/50 play call, but should have and did end up as the play was called on the field. That one was surprising to me that the ref called it an incomplete pass, as it is much easier to call it a TD knowing that Toronto will make the call on it, which also becomes a flaw to the system.
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TheLionKing
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On the replays of the Harris catch/non-catch I didn't see anything definitive that would overturn the original call of a reception.
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So when did throwing the ball into the stands after a TD become a penalty? Thnx BB
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Ballistic Bob wrote:So when did throwing the ball into the stands after a TD become a penalty? Thnx BB
New rule this season
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Sir Purrcival
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Only on a defense TD it seems because you are throwing the other teams ball into the stands.
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sj-roc
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TheLionKing wrote:
Ballistic Bob wrote:So when did throwing the ball into the stands after a TD become a penalty? Thnx BB
New rule this season
I think this rule change was discussed here during pre-season. The home team was once responsible for providing all game balls, but now each team can provide it own set (subject to pre-game inspection by league officials) that they can use when they're the ones putting the ball in play either from scrimmage or a kicking formation. So a player who scores on D or ST (punt, kick or MFG return TD) is throwing away the other team's ball when he celebrates like that and gets the flag. On O it's your own ball so no big deal.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:
Ballistic Bob wrote:So when did throwing the ball into the stands after a TD become a penalty? Thnx BB
New rule this season
I think this rule change was discussed here during pre-season. The home team was once responsible for providing all game balls, but now each team can provide it own set (subject to pre-game inspection by league officials) that they can use when they're the ones putting the ball in play either from scrimmage or a kicking formation. So a player who scores on D or ST (punt, kick or MFG return TD) is throwing away the other team's ball when he celebrates like that and gets the flag. On O it's your own ball so no big deal.
So what happens when a D guy makes his first INT for a TD or other landmark TD does he no longer get to keep the ball? Or can he buy the football from the other team?
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