Peter King Talks To Dean Blandino About The Amount Of Penalties In The Preseason

One of the major problems for the Chiefs this preseason, and for many other teams around the league, is the amount of flags being called for illegal contact and illegal hands to the face. Ron Parker, for example, struggled significantly adjusting to the contact rules and that led to a very poor start to the preseason for him.

Everyone in the league is a little anxious about how these penalties are going to be called in the preseason and how that will effect defenses and the pace of the game. Monday Morning Quarterback’s Peter King did a short interview with the NFL’s Vice President of Officiating Dean Blandino about the issue for his website. Here is what Blandino had to say.

What concerns me most about Blandino’s answer is he says the plan to call those penalties the same way in the regular season as they did in the preseason. Citing preseason statistics to say ‘Oh look, players adjusted’ is not quality evidence for if defenders adjusted. Looking past the fact nearly have of players who were playing in the preseason are no longer on NFL rosters, it doesn’t evaluate what the supposed ‘adjustment’ meant to the quality of defense being played.

Further, by week four Blandino said the league committed 71 penalties that were either defensive holding, illegal hands to the face, illegal contact, or offensive pass interference. (I think I saw one offensive pass interference penalty in the preseason.) This means over the course of a 16 game week – the maximum amount of games that can be played – there will be at least four or five penalties per game from this group called in a game. That doesn’t include holding, false start, defensive pass interference, personal fouls and all of the other penalties we already see a ton of.

Continuing this point, King notes there were 15 (14.9) penalties called per game in week four of the preseason. FIFTEEN! That’s one penalty per every four minutes of game play, or one penalty about every six plays. This number is still way too high and is not solving the more significant problem of offensive players being able to get away with any contact they wish while defensive players are forced to play in some bubble.

Assuming the game is going to continually be called the same way it has been in the preseason, games are about to get a lot longer and a lot more frustrating to watch.