NFL Penalty Stats 2009 through 2024 – Are We Seeing More Flags In 2024?

Have the refs been exceedingly flag happy in 2024?  To answer that question statistically, I pulled all the penalty data from 2009 – 2024 (Thursday’s game is not in the data.  FYI there were 12 accepted penalties in the game, & 13 flags thrown).  Here are the findings:

Penalties Per Year – Plays per Penalty & Play Penalty %

We can see in the chart above that in 2024 every 23 plays there is a penalty, and a penalty occurs on 4.33% of plays.  These are the highest values in any year by far.  Plays per Penalty is up almost 16% and Play Penalty % is up 19%.

Amount of Penalties

If we extrapolate the 92 games worth of penalties into a full 272 game season, the season is on pace for 3577 penalties in 2024.  That would be the second most behind 2015.

One note, normally the amount of penalties per game tends to decrease slightly over the course of a season.  To get to 3672 penalties to set the record for most since 2009, the refs would need to call about 0.5 more penalties a game than they are now, or 1 more penalty every two games.

Number of Plays

What may be a bit more interesting is that if we do the same extrapolation for the number of plays run in 2024, the season is on pace for 82,641 plays.  The lowest amount of plays in a year between 2009-2023 is 84,790.

It is this combination of a high penalty total, combined with a diminishing amount of total plays, that makes the plays/penalty low and penalty% high.  Its not that the actual amount of penalties has skyrocketed in 2024, its more a case of the low play total that makes the frequency higher.

One note about plays, it would seem the data counts offensive and defensive plays for a team. So it is not the amt of plays Team X runs, it is the amt of plays Team X have run(Team X Offense) + the amount of plays their opponents have run(Team X’s defense).

For example if you go to nflpenalties.com now you will see that New Orleans has 1080 plays and Denver 1073 plays. This is only possible if they are “double counting” as described above.

Penalties per Game

The amount of penalties per game in 2024 is 13.15.  This sits right in the middle in the 15 year period.  The high was 14.34 in 2015, and the low wa 11.596 in 2022.

In fact, 2020 – 2023 are the 4 lowest years when it comes to penalties per game.  However  the amount of plays has dropped from the around 95,000 to around 85,000 over the past 10 years which should result in a reduction of penalties called.

Total Flags Thrown – Includes Declined & Offsetting Penalties

If we look at the data for all flags thrown, which includes declined and offsetting penalties, we can see that the same trend applies to the 2024 data. This drops the plays per flag value down below 20, at 19.782. The flag thrown % clocks in at just over 5%.

Offensive Defensive Special Teams Penalty Breakdown

In the chart above we can see where the increase in penalties is happening.  Offensive penalty calls and yardage is up 14%.  Defensive penalties are down 10% and yardage down 5%.  Special teams penalties are down about 20%, which shouldn’t be surprising given the new kickoff rules.

While there is a decrease in defensive pre-snap penalties there is a 6% increase in offensive pre-snap penalties and a massive 41% increase in special teams pre-snap penalties.  This is like bizarro world for special teams, because the ST penalties were traditionally almost always blocking penalties or personal fouls.

Offensive Defensive & Special Teams Penalties Comparison by Year

This chart shows the raw penalty count comparison for years 2009 – 2023. We cannot include 2024 raw values because only 6 games have been played.  To compare 2024 to the previous 15 years, we need to convert stats into percentages which is the chart below.

We can see the impending doom with the dark red offensive pre-snap penalties in 2023.  They amount of offensive pre-snap penalties called last year was the highest since 2009.  We can also see the decline of ST penalties as kickoff rules have been tinkered with the last few years.  Touchbacks limit penalties on kickoffs.

Offensive Defensive & Special Teams Penalties % Comparison by Year

The chart above shows the break down of offensive, defensive and special teams penalties by percentages.  Pre-snap penalties are also included in the comparison.

Penalty Count – BLACK
Penalty Yardage – BLUE
Pre-snap – PURPLE

We can see the dark red for 2024 offensive penalties and penalty yardage compared to all the other years.  Also the red in presnap offense and special teams penalties.