Alright, so let’s talk about those Chiefs penalties in 2023. Man, it was a topic, wasn’t it?
It all started for me when I kept seeing the same complaints online, week after week. “Chiefs getting too many flags!” “Refs are biased!” You know the drill. So, being the data-loving nerd I am, I decided to dig in myself. I needed to SEE the numbers to form my own opinion.
First thing I did was grab all the penalty data I could find. Thankfully, the NFL’s website has game-by-game stats, so I started scraping that stuff into a spreadsheet. Yeah, it was a little tedious, but hey, gotta do what you gotta do. I focused specifically on the 2023 regular season and playoffs.
Next up, organizing the data. I broke it down by game, by penalty type, and by team (Chiefs vs. opponent). I even added a column to note if the penalty was offensive or defensive, just for extra context. Spreadsheets are your best friend here, trust me.
Then came the fun part: analyzing the trends. I started calculating things like:
- Total penalties per game for the Chiefs
- Total penalty yards per game for the Chiefs
- Most common penalty types
- How the Chiefs’ penalty numbers compared to the league average
One thing that popped out right away was that the Chiefs did have a relatively high number of penalties compared to other teams. But it wasn’t as insane as some people online were making it out to be. It wasn’t a conspiracy. They were just…penalized a lot.
I then dove deeper into specific penalty types. False starts and holding calls seemed to be the biggest culprits. Which, honestly, makes sense. Those are always common penalties, especially on the offensive line.
To get a better understanding, I watched game highlights, focusing on the plays where penalties were called. I wanted to see if the calls were legit, or if there was room for debate. Some were obvious, some were definitely questionable. That’s football for ya.
Finally, I compared the Chiefs’ penalty data to previous seasons. Were they getting penalized more in 2023 compared to, say, 2022 or 2021? Turns out, their penalty numbers were pretty consistent with their historical averages. So, it wasn’t like they suddenly became a super undisciplined team overnight.
So, what did I learn from all this? Yeah, the Chiefs had a lot of penalties in 2023. But it wasn’t some massive outlier event, and it wasn’t necessarily evidence of some grand conspiracy. They just needed to clean up some of their play, especially on the offensive line. It’s something they definitely needed to work on.
That’s pretty much it. Just a little bit of data digging to try and make sense of all the noise. Always good to look at the numbers yourself!
