NFL 2014 Season Week 1 Picks

Dun dun dun!!!!

For all the defensive hold and illegal contact penalties called in the preseason (nearly the same number this preseason as all of last year entirely) in response to some rules emphasis referred to by quite a few people as the Seattle Seahawks rules, the Seahawks were called for exactly 0 defensive holding penalties during the preason. But don't worry, the refs plan on toning down their penalty calling for the regular season, so the Seahawks will likely see that number come down quite a bit.

On an unrelated note: I didn't know what Molly was until last night. If I were Wes Welker, I'd probably have chosen the Mint Julep.

Speaking of which:

http://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-entertainment/seahawks/articles/11-reasons-the-seahawks-are-so-good-2014

He and I exchanged like 5 long emails on it, for like 8 semi out of context words. It's really not even clear what "it's" refers to. We were talking about the lack of penalties in general and how, IMO, people WAY over estimate how often these penalties get called. Refs aren't going to call defensive holding every time, and you're talking about a misiscule uptick in penalties per game in exchange for holding everyone all the time. It's an exploitable system. Oh well, I guess.

Defensive PI is one of those penalties that I bet, if you asked around, people would guess teams get called for once a game on good games 3-4 on bad days, when in fact it's called under one time per game. Less than half a call per game per team.

Part of me thinks that if anything they should redefine defensive holding in such a way that it reflects the way it is actually called in a game. The old adage with offensive linemen is that you can hold as long as your hands are within the shoulders, though I don't think that's in the rulebook in so many words. For defensive holding, there is no such wording, and frankly, there doesn't seem to be even the unwritten, "this is acceptable, this isn't" consensus. Sometimes jersey grabbing gets called, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's only called if the grabbing "turns" the receiver. Sometimes simply handchecking a receiver draws a flag. It's almost like calling balls and strikes in that it's different with every ref. Now, frankly, Jeremy is probably right that it is not called nearly as often is people think it is. That being said, there were about 5 or 6 times as many calls per game in the preseason compared to last year. And while they say that the point has been made and that they will likely return to normal, if they don't and the calls jump to like 2 or 3 calls per game per team, that alone can push football one step close to the arena football, "this is getting almost unwatchable" realm. It probably won't get that bad, but it still changes the game.

Even if they got strict on it, they're not going to call it every time, so there's still an exploitable gulf there. No ref is going to flag a player on back to back to back to back plays. Worse yet, it almost becomes human nature that the ref would establish what would draw a call as a one-off event for another team as the new baseline in this game. After a time only the truly egregious things would draw a call.

How many passes wont get made because your defense is beating up receivers on every play? Is that not worth one or two first downs? We're talking now about a penalty called .68 times a game. Seattle was 2nd with .58. Let's say they nearly double that this year to 1 a game. IMO anyone who thinks 1 defensive holding a game isn't worth hog-tying receivers on every play needs to read "Moneyball."

We've all decided that playing penalty football is the pinnacle of achievement, and obviously in a perfect world it would be, but in reality a team with no defensive holding, PI, etc probably plays soft crappy defense.

You guys want to know a crazy stat from last season? Denver scored 606 points. The number 2 team, Chicago, had 445, a difference of 161. There was a bigger gap from #1 to #2 than there was from #2 to #30.

Sometimes how something is perceived makes the reality irrelevant. What I mean is that you could look at it in the exact opposite manner. So say the calls go from .5 per game to 1.5 per game. That's a difference of 1 call per game (or less if I'm rounding up to 1.5). That could then suggest that feelings of the fans of the offense-happy rules emphasis is so fragile that any just a small nudge in the direction of more rules to penalize defense could make it all people talk about. Look at roughing the passer. It probably doesn't get called as often as people think, but all anyone says now-a-days is that "you can't even touch the QB". It's probably not true in reality, but the perception is that everytime a defender hits a QB (.000001 seconds or more after he releases the football) fans and players cringe and wait for what they think might be a flag coming. The perception of getting a penalty on every QB hit has changed the way players play. The same could become the case with defensive secondary rules.

After careful consideration I have determined that Seattle has, at a minimum, an above average type football team.