Breaking down penalty-based trends for the 2023 Jets

The Jets did not appear to be a disciplined team in 2023

Once again, New York Jets coaches, players and fans felt aggrieved in 2023, as their penalty rates were often among the highest in the NFL and a few close games featured crucial calls that went against them, which could have been the difference between them losing and having a chance to win.

Last year, we identified some penalty-related trends and drew conclusions from these. Let’s revisit those trends to see if they reoccurred in 2023 or if any of our hypotheses drawn from them proved salient. We shall also see if there were any new trends that cropped up last year.

Let’s recap last year’s identified trends with an update on how things progressed in 2023:

Overall Rankings

The Jets were down in 21st in total penalties in 2022, albeit only because of a concerted effort to reduce penalties down the stretch. However, they were 10th in total penalty yardage, as they averaged almost 10 yards per penalty and their opponents averaged less than eight yards per penalty.

This placed them in the middle of the pack for net penalty count but third from last in terms of net penalty yards.

In addition, Jets home games had the highest number of penalties called, whereas for their road games it was only ninth highest. So, if you assume the home team will get their fair share of hometown calls, this was something the Jets would benefit from less than anyone else.

2023 update:

The Jets were pretty focused and showed good discipline at the start of the year. They had just 17 penalties for 96 yards in the first four games. That didn’t last.

In the end, the Jets had more penalties than everyone apart from the Houston Texans, who only surpassed them because they played two playoff games as well. They also ended up with more yards in the regular season than everyone apart from the Seattle Seahawks.

They weren’t benefiting similarly from opponents getting flagged. The Jets’ net penalty count was worst in the league even though the net yardage count was only fifth worst.

Types of Penalties

Clearly with the higher penalty yardage average the 2022 Jets were getting more spot fouls and 10 or 15 yard penalties than garden-variety five-yarders compared to other teams.

In particular, they had five roughing the passer penalties, which was second in the league, while benefiting from none. Also, the average yardage on their pass interference penalties was over 25 yards. Only the Bears and Falcons (who only had one such penalty) had a higher average. Pass interference penalties called on their opponents only averaged 18 yards.

2023 update:

Roughing the passer calls were again an issue as they were tied for third in the league with five. They did finally snap a streak of more than a year by getting one against the Chargers in the middle of the year, though, and ended up with three.

The pass interference trend was reversed as the Jets committed just five for 66 yards and benefited from nine for 129 yards, although this was still down in the bottom half.

Specific Players

In 2022 the Jets were led by George Fant with eight penalties in just eight games and Duane Brown was next with six, his highest total since 2015.

2023 update:

If there’s any suggestion that players get less favorable treatment once they play for the Jets, then the fact that Fant had just four in over a thousand snaps with the Texans after having eight in just over 500 snaps with the Jets arguably supports this.

It will be interesting to see how Mekhi Becton fares next year. He was second in the NFL for total penalties behind Jawaan Taylor, but several of these seemed like harsh calls.

On defense, while Sauce Gardner probably had the most high-profile controversial penalty of the year against the Chiefs, it was DJ Reed who seemed to be getting unfavorable calls more often than anyone else. He had eight penalties, having previously had five once and two or less in every other season.

Pre-Snap

In 2022 the Jets were down in 22nd for pre-snap penalties but this issue escalated as the season went on. 15 of their 31 came in the last six games.

The team also benefited from fewer false start penalties by their opponents than any other NFL team in 2022.

2023 update:

The pre-snap penalties were a much more serious issue in 2023. The Jets had 52, an increase of 21, and only the Browns (who played an extra game in the postseason) had more. Once again, this paints a picture of a team whose focus on offense dwindled as the season progressed.

Is reducing penalties actually a bad thing?

In 2022 the Jets made a concerted effort to reduce their penalty count down the stretch, but they still lost their last six games. This had us wondering if actually when you’re playing less physical in coverage, releasing blocks early to avoid holding calls or pulling out of hits does this actually put you at MORE of a competitive disadvantage?

Backing this up is the fact that the Jets were 6-5 when they had more penalty yards but 1-5 when they had less (and the one win there was a game where they had five penalty yards and the Bears had 10 in a game that wasn’t close).

However, there is a much stronger correlation between the Jets’ win-loss record and their pre-snap penalties. This underlines the importance of cutting down on these along with the obvious signs of a lack of focus from the team as the season unravelled.

2023 update:

Once again there is some inverse correlation here. You can split the Jets’ season into four sections. They started 1-3. They then won three straight as they went to 4-3. After this they lost five straight to drop to 4-8. Finally, they won three of their last five to end up 7-10. Now let’s check the penalty counts:

First four games (1-3): 17 penalties, 96 yards (4.25 for 24 average)

Next three games (3-0): 27 penalties, 224 yards (9 for 75 average)

Next five games (0-5): 38 penalties, 288 yards (7.6 for 58 average)

Last five games (3-2): 42 penalties, 336 yards (8.4 for 67 average)

Clearly the Jets were once again committing more penalties when they were playing their best football. The last number is particularly revealing given that it was skewed downwards by the last game where the officials were reluctant to call anything in the snow and the Jets ended up with just one five-yard penalty. The previous four games had averaged over 10 penalties and over 80 yards.

In their seven wins, the Jets had a lower penalty yardage count than their opponent in just two of them. In the 10 losses, they had a lower penalty yardage count in five of them. So does cutting back penalties even help you to win games? Perhaps not.

New trends and conclusions

Much of the 2023 data reinforces our main conclusions from last year. Namely:

• Sometimes if a team is forced to make a specific effort to reduce their penalty count, it can theoretically put them at more of a disadvantage than the actual calls themselves;
• The Jets do seem to, for whatever reason and both in terms of certain individuals and as a team, suffer from unfavorable officiating; and
• The importance of eradicating pre-snap penalties cannot be understated, even if this time may have been more to do with the constant personnel changes on the interior line than a lack of team-wide focus and discipline.

In terms of new trends to keep an eye on for next year, the most interesting was probably how the Jets often displayed excellent discipline in the first half only to still end up with a high penalty count. This could be attributed to poor focus coming out of the locker room after half time, but there also seemed to be incidences of the officials suddenly calling a series of questionable penalties on them, as if they had a quota to meet or something.

Examples include:

• The Philadelphia game where the Jets had just 15 yards on three penalties heading into the two minute warning in the first half but ended up with nine for 68
• The Las Vegas game where the Jets had one penalty with just over two minutes left in the first half but ended up with eight for 83 yards
• The Atlanta game where the Jets had just one five-yard penalty entering the last four minutes of the first half but ended up with 11 for 71
• The Miami game where the Jets had one penalty with four minutes to go in the first half but ended up with seven.
• The Washington game where the Jets had just two accepted penalties for 15 yards with under two minutes to go in the first half but ended up with 14 for 150 yards
• The Cleveland game where the Jets had three penalties for 15 yards with under four minutes left in the first half but ended up with 12 for 74 yards.

That’s a strange but commonly repeating pattern from which many conclusions can be drawn about coaching, player preparation or the officiating itself. It can certainly be something for us to keep an eye on next year.

Data from NFLPenalties.com was used to determine rankings and comparisons with other teams but all other data was compiled by us.