In 2007, the Green Bay Packers were 4th in the NFL in penalties. In 2008, they moved up to 2nd, and in 2009, the Packers claimed the top spot in the entire NFL. (BTW, for a more detailed look at the Packers penalty history with Mike McCarthy, take a look at this article written in June.)
With their recent domination of the NFL penalty stats, are there more hills to climb? What could the Packers do to solidify their legacy of penalty prowess. Wait, I’ve got it! They can set new Packers all-time records.
Well, one down already:
Most penalties in a single game – (18) in franchise history. What a great bullet point on your coaching resume. The record was previously held by the 1945 Packers. Looking at the roster for that team, about the only recognizable names are Ted Fritsch and Don Hutson (this was Hutson’s last season and he was strictly a kicker that year). With the roster depleted by WWII, this was surely some ugly football being played in the NFL. And now the 2010 Packers can say they were just as ugly on this one day.
So what’s left?
Most Penalties in a Season – The current record of 135 is held by the 5-9-1 1987 Packers. You remember that team, don’t you? Names like Randy Wright, Paul Ott Carruth, Phil Epps, Alfonso Carreker. Ahh, the good old days… (actually, that team did have one of my all-time favorite linebacker corps, with John Anderson, Brian Noble, Tim Harris and Johnny Holland. Other than that, though…). Mike McCarthy’s Packers did manage 118 penalties in 2009, but you would think they need to get their penalty-producing asses in gear to catch that 1987 team. Amazingly, though, the Packers need only to maintain their current penalty per game average (8.6667) to finish the season with 138 penalties. Hey, that’s not unreasonable!
Most Penalty Yards in a season – (1103 yards) Also currently held by the 1987 packers . Boy, that team was something, wasn’t it? But let’s not shortchange the 2010 Packers. It was only last season that the Packers were penalized for 1057 yards, currently good for second place in franchise history. Now this is a very attainable goal to shoot for. Go Pack!
Most Penalty yards in a game: (184) We come back to the 1945 Packers. And yes folks, once again second place is held by Mike McCarthy’s 2009 Packers with 175 penalty yards against the Ravens. That’s just one more holding penalty away. Come on offensive line, step it up!
So, for those of you who were worried about what the Packers could do to reach new heights in the penalty department, I’ve shown you that there is still much more left to be accomplished. As long as Mike McCarthy is still planning on “cleaning that up”, with a liitle hard work, the Packers can surely achieve these lofty goals.
Penalty Champs Or Die!
(For a slightly more serious look at penalties and the Green Bay Packers, check out this recent article by Brian Carriveau on Mike McCarthy’s tolerance for penalties and this article from last season by Greg Bedard on why he thinks penalties don’t matter.)
——————
Follow Jersey Al:
Follow @JerseyAlGBP
Add to Circleson
Jersey Al Bracco is the founder and editor of AllGreenBayPackers.com, and the co-founder of Packers Talk Radio Network. He can be heard as one of the Co-Hosts on Cheesehead Radio and is the Green Bay Packers Draft Analyst for Drafttek.com.
——————
Question: When Tauscher was flagged for back-to-back false starts within the 1-yard line (side note: I almost punched a hole through my wall), how do those penalties factor into the penalty yardage totals when, really, they only accounted for a few inches each. Are they counted as a regular 5-yard penalty for stat purposes?
That’s a real good question. I’ll try to find out.
Evan, according to Brian at http://AdvancedNFLstats.com , only the actual distance marked off is counted.
Hmmm…how can that be true when the penalty yardage totals are always whole numbers? Wouldn’t it be like 187.5 penalty yards or something (half the distance from the 1 yard line being .5 yard penalty)?
I would imagine they just round up or down to the closest yard.
Maybe the guys are a little uptight. Perhaps they should go out the night before the game and let loose a little bit.
Go out the night before a game? It worked for me.
Look at the picture above and tell me that I don’t look like I have all the answers to what ails us.
I thought we set the penalty yards/game record last year. Guess I was wrong.
What can you say? We gave a game away due to lack of discipline, which is poor coaching. I wrote a tremendously long post here this past summer about how I thought McC was a great QB coach and fantastic at gameplanning during the week. But he wasn’t as good at in-game decisions. I still feel that way, but discipline should be addressed all week long, and it’s obvious that his message is either flawed or not getting though, or both.
This team can hang with any team in the league. But now we see that we can also lose to any team in the league when we fall apart. Monday night was a big game. We’re home for the Super Bowl if this happens in another big game that is a playoff game.
I had seen what looked like a change in attitude from McCarthy (kicking some ass, when needed), so I was willing to believe the discipline problems were finally behind them. Especially after the first two games. But no this. I just don’t know what to think right now…
I prefer to look at that game as the Tampa Bay 09′ game of this year. It was after that game that the over confidnet blow hards finally woke up. On Sunday they better come out of the locker room on fire. Another sloppy game will be a bad omen. This team has got to stop the “Show Boat Crap.” It is time to play the game the way it should be played. No more walk on the field and count the win before the openning kick off.
MM and TT you need to do something about the piss-poor running game NOW. You have to gai9n 100 yards per game to use the paaing game to full advantage. The discipline problem is all yours MM. Fix It Now! If it take kicking ass in public, do it>
paaing = passing
drop the 9 from gai9n
Actually, losing to the Lions would be a lot more like the Tampa game, based on quality of the opponent. Regardless, I’m with you on the big talk. That only comes back to bite you. I’ve expressed those sentiments many times.
The penalties are a direct result of our Tackles not being able to play football anymore. They had to consistantly cheat their way out of being beaten. The secondary penalties, you can live with that, specially since some where dubious.
All in all, penalties are a reflect of poor performance.
Good point. How are these tackles going to do against Jared Allen twice? DeMarcus Ware? Vanden Bosch twice? Peppers one more game?
There is no excuse for special teams penalties, though.
Please don’t get me started… ST…
Anyway, what killed us where the OL penalties last game. If we make half of those, we score 25+ points, and we win the game…
If the guys can’t do the job, put Bulaga and Lang in there ASAP.
That’s not a visual I needed right now…
Take away the penalties by Cliffy and Tausch and that still leave 12 penalties. More than enough for any game.
Agreed. But take away just that holding by Tauscher that negated the Finley TD, and we win…
Take away the dropped TD by Chicago and none of this even matters.
If we can dissolve the fact of fissics then what happened is a fact of it happened to the fact of what happened may of happened or a possible theory of the happening we thought happened so thought of a fact of possible happenings is a testimenet to facts that were or may not be happening at the time anyone thought facts may be happening even if not really happening,so whatever is happening is or may not be in a fact HAPPENING….KIRK…SPOCK…where the hell are you when we need common sense…sorry logic
speechless…
Speechless is exactly how I feel when I read notions that if this or that didn’t happen we win the game.When everything from that point changes because nothing else happens the way it does if something didn’t happen the way it did.
The ability to EDIT is limited to what already happened,to EDIT an occurence and think nothing else changes is impossible.To say if Tauscher doesn’t hold and the TD is good we win is saying everything after that stayed the same which is impossible.
The previous writing was only a jest to show how ridiculous those notions are to believe.
All I have to add is that the above photo of McCarthy is just priceless.