Green Bay’s frustration with replacement officials may be justified, but glaring game-ending mistakes like the one that cost the Packers a win in Seattle haven’t been where the replacements are impacting games most.

Instead, it’s been a few extra flags, thrown at critical times, that have thrown the league and its players into turmoil.

When it comes to penalties, the replacements have been quicker on the trigger with the flags, but not by a huge margin.  According to data at pro-football-reference.com, teams were flagged for 6.8 penalties per game this season, compared to 6.4 last year. It cost them an extra five yards — 59 per team, per game in 2012, compared to 54 last season.

The problem was the type of penalty that replacement officials were more likely to call.

Replacement officials called defensive pass interference 26 times in Week 1, more times than that call was made in any week last season.

After getting criticism for making the call too often, officials backed off on making the call in Weeks 2 and 3. They averaged 17 defensive interference calls the last two weeks.

That doesn’t mean the replacements were adjusting to the game, however. They just didn’t make that particular call.  As flags for defensive interference fell, the number of calls for illegal contact and defensive holding went up.

Referees made 10 defensive holding calls in Week 2 and 14 in Week 3. That call only hit double digits in three weeks last season. 

If the replacement referees continued calling penalties on defensive backs at the same rate for the entire season, here’s how the numbers would compare to last year.

 

Interference calls

Yards

Illegal contact calls

Yards

Defensive holding calls

Yards

2011

205

3472

68

338

126

591

2012 (projected)

320

4690

85

479

155

789

 

That’s an extra 1,550 penalty yards assessed against defenses. Those three calls alone explain three of the five extra penalty yards a game that teams are seeing.

The replacement officials have tipped the balance between offense and defense:  91 percent of all flags on long passes have gone against the defender this season, compared to 85 percent last year. 

All three penalties also come with an automatic first down. So it should come as no surprise that teams are averaging more than two first downs by penalty per game this year, an 18 percent increase over last year.

A flag on a defensive back also wipes out an incomplete pass, and passing accuracy statistics are showing the impact of the replacement officials, as well. NFL quarterbacks completed 60.1 percent of their passes last year, and 60.8 percent the year before.  Accuracy is up nearly 2 percentage points this year, to 62 percent.

The other big difference in penalties from last year to this year has come from players’ increasing frustration with the officiating.

Frustration penalties -- things like unsportsmanlike contact and personal fouls -- doubled from Week 1 to Week 3.  There were 49 hot-headed penalties last week, seven more than in any week last season.

Each team is giving up about 15.2 yards per game on frustration penalties, which is about a yard-and-a-half more than last year.

A field goal in Baltimore and an interception that wasn’t in Seattle got the majority of attention.  But it’s been a few extra flags on pass plays, and a little less contact being permitted -- and the players’ reaction to it -- that has tipped the balance between offense and defense.                               

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