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Hope You Like Laundry on the Field, Because the Eagles and Bears Have the NFL’s Worst Penalty Differentials
Published:
The Eagles were penalized 14 times in the putrid, repulsive, abhorrent, atrocity of a choke job against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday. It was a smorgasbord of pre-snap, alignment, and live ball errors that acted like a howitzer pointing downward, which is a stupid way of saying they continually shot themselves in the foot. Particularly excruciating was the flag on Matt Pryor that wiped out a big first down gain.
As of Monday morning, the Eagles are now one of the NFL’s worst penalty teams, with:
- 84 total penalties (7th most)
- 7.6 penalties per game (also 7th)
- 54 offensive penalties (tied 4th most)
- 17 special teams penalties (tied 4th most)
- -20 penalty differential (2nd worst)
- -156 penalty yard differential (4th worst)
They’re getting hammered in this department. The only unit that’s league average or better is the defense, which has committed 30 penalties and finds itself smack in the middle in zebra-identified miscues.
What’s more is that Sunday’s opponent, the 8-3 Chicago Bears, are also a hideous penalty team. Their penalty differential is -26, which is worst in the entire league. They commit 7.9 penalties per game and have a -296 yardage differential, which is dead last by almost 70 full yards. That’s almost three full football fields worth of penalty yardage in differential and suggests some big DPIs in there, but we’ll double check and see if that is, in fact, the case.
So it’s gonna suck on Friday, a short-rest game between two of the NFL’s sloppiest teams. If you like seeing laundry all over the field, then this is gonna be the greatest Black Friday ever!
Sidenote: the Birds committed just 6.1 penalties per game last year. But they had a -99 yard differential and -19 penalty differential because the refs never called anything against their opponents. It was a strange trend.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com