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Flag football? CFL penalties are up 30 per cent
One of the most notable elements of the 2014 CFL season thus far has been the amount of penalties called. Paul Friesen of The Winnipeg Sun dug into that this week, talking to CFL vice-president of officiating Glen Johnson Wednesday. Johnson confirmed that there's been an average of 24 penalties per game thus far, a 30 per cent rise over the 18.4 called last year, and talked about how that's not the intention of the league office:
The average number of penalties per game has exploded this season, up 30 percent from last year: from 18.4 per game to 24, league vice-president of officiating Glen Johnson confirmed in an interview with the Sun, Wednesday.
"There's more penalties than anyone would like," Johnson said. "We're working really hard to sort that out... it's a shared responsibility between the clubs and our officiating department." ...
The type of calls most on the rise: illegal blocks, including holding, on kick returns, objectionable conduct and unnecessary roughness, including roughing the passer.
Many of the objectionable conduct calls are for taunting an opponent. This year players also get called for pretending to throw a flag when they believe a penalty should have been called.
"The league's asked us to clean that up," Johnson said.
So, part of the rise may be about the league trying to enforce its rules more consistently. Another element may be the amount of rookies in the league this year, which may be higher than normal thanks to the creation of a new team in Ottawa and the siphoning off of some veterans to them through the expansion draft and free agency, plus the numbers of CFL players who left for the NFL this past offseason. Still, the league spent three hours with each team's coach this offseason on what is and isn't a penalty, so part of the issue may be that coaches haven't passed that message on to their players effectively enough. It may also be that there's more money being spent on training and evaluating officials; Friesen writes that "With more immediate evaluation and feedback than they've ever had, and a brighter spotlight on their work, officials seem to be calling games by the book, hard and fast." That seems like a desirable outcome from a consistency standpoint, but coaches and players will have to adapt to the new standard to limit the amount of flags thrown.
It's notable that there's been as much or more criticism of the officiating this year as well, though. Ticats' players Marc Beswick and Simoni Lawrence blasted the refs this week after their loss to B.C. Friday (and were fined for it, as you'd expect), using some of the harshest criticism that's been seen about officials in a long while:
"That game was not refereed fairly and I don't care if they fine me. I care about the game being fair," Beswick said. "If you don't believe me, watch the film. "You can put that in there, I don't give a (expletive)." ...
The Ticats were called for objectionable conduct twice on Friday, including one against linebacker Simoni Lawrence, who was flagged in the third quarter after protesting another penalty too vehemently for Murphy's liking.
"That was real selfish. Even if you think it was a horrible call, you need to keep your mouth shut," Lawrence said. "The refs aren't good up here and you have to understand that. You can't make it close."
A lot of the increase in penalties may be coming from those Tiger-Cats, though, and part of that's their youth. They're both the youngest team in the league (average age of 26.5, with the next-closest being Ottawa's 26.9 and the league average being 27.3) and the most-penalized (89 penalties; Ottawa's second with 78). Head coach Kent Austin told Steve Milton of The Hamilton Spectator that his team isn't disciplined enough right now:
"(We) have to have a little bit more mental and emotional discipline during the game," Austin said of his team leading the league in both penalty frequency and acreage thereby assessed. "And where we see patterns of behaviour in guys who are repeat offenders, they're going to lack playing time. We've put the responsibility on each coach to keep his guys disciplined and that they know the ramifications."
Austin isn't the only head coach upset about his team's lack of discipline. Toronto head coach Scott Milanovich told Frank Zicarelli of The Toronto Sun his team's taking too many post-play penalties:
“We just need to get back to the huddle,” said head coach Scott Milanovich. “All of us, we need to understand the repercussions of post-play penalties. We got away with it (Tuesday night), but that’s the discouraging thing.”
Milanovich thought his team had taken a step forward in Montreal, only to take two steps backward against Winnipeg.
“It was upsetting,” he added. “I was pissed. I got to find a way to get those guys to understand that we can’t have those penalties and be an elite team.”
So, some of the increase in penalties may be the officials cracking down, but players being undisciplined seems to be a large part of it too. One way or the another, players are going to have to get in line with how things are being called. If they do that, perhaps we can move away from the flag football era.
