MGoFilm Analysis Ep. 4.1 || Penalties on Indiana
Hey guys. Decided to analyze the officiating this week for the analysis. I started with the Indiana penalties / missed calls since I thought it'd be shorter. Well, the number of missed calls made it a bit longer than I thought it would be.
I added a counter at the top right of the screen to create easier discussion. Instead of having to describe the play, it allows you to just say "Clip 7" or "Play 9" or something. Hopefully that'll make things easier for everyone.
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As always, I'm open to new suggestions on how I can improve these. They've come a long way from episode 1. Thanks for the positive feedback thus far and go blue!
**EDIT**
User AC1997 correctly mentioned the punt return in the 4th that set up an IU TD drive. There was a clear block in the back against IU on Glasgow that I failed to include in the video. After the Michigan video, I'll likely post a third one with some clean-up / fringe no-calls I didn't initially include or ones I missed.
October 19th, 2017 at 5:42 PM ^
October 18th, 2017 at 3:37 PM ^
After watching this it almost seems like the refs were trying to help Indiana win this game. Lots of missed calls on IU. Glad we pulled this game out despite this crew trying to be like the OSU crew from last year.
October 18th, 2017 at 3:40 PM ^
I expected this video to focus on M's penalties; in which case I was going to quote UM Fan From Sydney: "Holy shit this is long."
October 18th, 2017 at 3:44 PM ^
@ FLA 7 penalties, -55 yards - Referee: Brad Van Vark
vs Cincy 7 penalities, -68 yards - Referee: Don Willard
vs AF 7 penalties, -72 yards - Referee: Mike Cannon
vs Purdon't 7 penalties, -57 yards Referee: Jerry McGinn
vs MSU 7 penalties, - 53 yards Referee: John O'Neill
@ Indiana 16 penalities, 141 yards Referee: Mark Kluczynski
Some other observations:
1. Michigan is a highly undisciplined football team comparatively and nationally speaking. Exactly what you'd expect given Michigan's overall youth and new starters. Michigan is ranked 106th in the nation with -446 total penaltiy yards. That is bad for a talented football team. It is almost certainly lethal for an offensively anemic one.
Still, FWIW Ohio State is the most penalized team in the Big10 right now ranked 123rd in the nation with -521 penalty yards. They don't feel it because of the explosiveness of their offense and talent on defense.
2. There doesn't seem to be inidication that John O'Neill and his crew "has it out for the Wolverines". Somehow Michigan had its least penalized game of the season vs. MSU this year with O'Neill and crew officiating with 7 penalties for only 53 yards. It was par.
3. From what I can find Mark Kluczynski is not a very experienced college football referee. He has been a MAC conference referee, but has officiated Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana. This may or may not explain the irrational exhuberance for the yellow fabric 16 times last Saturday. Indiana had 5 penalties for 55 yards also. It was his first Indiana game since Ball State @ Indiana 2016.
4. Michigan football games have not yet been officiated by Daniel Capron of the 2016 UM@OSU fame, so...brace yourselves?
5. O'Neill has a horrible reputation for "throwing" Penn State games as well. An O'Neill appointment to Michigan @ Penn State this weekend is going to create a lot of groans from Nittany Lions faithful also.
October 18th, 2017 at 4:10 PM ^
I think the issue with O'Neill is more complicated than just "quantity" of penalties. I think his crew is very inconsistent first of all. I also think they have a tendency to make massive game-changing decisions on personal foul calls - targeting, roughing the punter, roughing the passer, late hit (though I admit to having only circumstantial evidence). My perception of them is also that they let a LOT of holding and grabbing go, which favors "maximum effort" teams like MSU and Iowa.
We know they were involved in some of the craziest losses for Michigan in recent years and in every game there were a slew of questionable calls - hence why we think he sucks regardless of calling too many or too few penalties.
October 18th, 2017 at 4:25 PM ^
Wisconsin shot themselves in the foot over and over with turnovers and dumb penalties, and LB TJ Edwards, one of their best defensive players, was ejected for targeting by O'Neill and crew. It looked like a valid call after the fact, howver. They don't show replays on the large monitors consistently at Camp Randall for some dumb reason.
In general both teams were very aggressive defensively all game long in shitty weather conditions (downpours) . Purdue was dinged 7 times for -45 yards and Wisconsin dinged 8 times for -65 yards plus the costly targeting call.
Overall, there were just seemed to be a lot of penalties and timeouts in this game which interrupted drives and momentum on both sides.
I don't disagree that O'Neill and his crews are incompetent. They seem this way to me also.
But I think what seems like incompetence to us is actually more over aggressiveness/assertiveness/controllling of game outcomes than what is probably necessary and normal. There also seems this tendency of O'Neill to tit-for-tat all penalizations to keep things equal, or at least the perception of that.
In the MSU @ Michigan game, the Spartans were penalized 11 freaking times for -81 yards. That's a lot of flag throwing.
October 18th, 2017 at 5:30 PM ^
Couldn't agree more. Some of the calls from his crew are of a large magnitude. It was also his crew that called the MSU at Nebraska game a couple years ago when Neb won with that long pass at the end of the game. The WR stepped out of bounds (not forced) and the refs ruled that he was forced out and the TD stood.
October 19th, 2017 at 8:45 AM ^
October 19th, 2017 at 11:13 AM ^
critic of it, you must understand that there is a psychology involved in it that relates to game management, which means certain calls are made for example if one sideline or dugout is complaining about certain calls and asking you to pay attention to certain actions by both teams. This sort of gamesmanship is taken with a grain of salt. You hear it and respond to the request, but you don't necessarily act on it.
However, when a coach, as Indiana's did on Saturday, try to intimidate a crew and imply that because Michigan is Michigan and Indiana isn't at the same level in college football competitveness, the Wolverines get more calls, there is probably a certain truth to that. This is just perception over time, but this kind of charge only gains traction at home, never on the road. I've heard several coaches try to use that tactic to get calls or comment on them afterward. Tom Allen certainly tried this and it worked on Saturday.
This tells you a couple of things, the crew working the Michigan-Indiana game isn't the same as one working Purdue-Wisconsin or the one which will be assigned to Penn State-Michigan. If you get worked by a sideline, as Indiana's worked the crew last week, you get that reputation for intimidation which then impacts how your officiating is perceived going forward. Your calls come under greater scrutiny.
You have to remember that every crew evaluates itself after every game, schools can submit game film to the league office for review of certain calls, and they are subject to fine if they denounce a crew's work publicly because as in every sport, judgment of officials must be protected to preserve the sport's integrity. But that is why officiating is so scrutinized and integrally committed to consistency and self-evaluation.
Here's the problem for Michigan: in games the Wolverines have played involving two of the Big Ten's alleged best officiating crews, the Wolverines have marginally high losing records in those contests. This would be John O'Neil and Dan Capron's crews. And it doesn't matter where the games are played. Now, if you look more closely, you might see that they work most of Michigan's rivalry games. And Michigan's rivalry game record has been poor over the last three coaches, so the officiating record is seemingly less sinister when you consider that.
Now, let's be clear, Jim Harbaugh has modified his sideline behavior as a result of being fined at Ohio State last year. Also, Dan Capron's crew hasn't worked a Michigan game this year. So, both Michigan and the league have responded to the aftermath of the circumstances that prompted such outrage over the lack of consistency in calls in that game. We will see who the league assigns to work in Happy Valley Saturday night. As always, just hope for consistency. Because that's all you can pray for at this point.
October 18th, 2017 at 4:47 PM ^
October 18th, 2017 at 6:30 PM ^
One other thing to note about relative penalty rankings.
If Michigan had kept pace with their previous games, they'd have 7 penalties per game and -61 penalty yards per game. That would put them at 89th and 88th in the country. Not great.
Using actuals, though, with the clear outlier that was Indiana, Michigan has 8.5 penalties per game for -74.3 penalty yards per game. That ranks 118th and 120th, respectively. Downright horrid.
Penn State, by contrast, has been flagged an average of 4 times per game for -38.7 yards. 11th and 23rd, respectively. Michigan will have a very difficult time if they are basically penalized double what Penn State is on Saturday night.
October 19th, 2017 at 12:03 AM ^
Oneil took away a 40 yard td to crawford so your numbers point is moot.
October 18th, 2017 at 4:01 PM ^
Love the slow mo and the explanations are great.
October 18th, 2017 at 4:14 PM ^
Hope you will agree to do more of these!
October 18th, 2017 at 4:28 PM ^
- Correct call
- Initiates from side and doesn't put the player on the ground. Good no call.
- McKeon initiates contact. From the BJ's perspective, it would look like he was blocking downfield. There's a bit of jersey grabbing, but O'Korn bails from the pocket before McKeon stops driving and actually tries to make his cut. I'd say it's probably a good no call. Had O'Korn stayed in the pocket, I might call the holding after he makes the break.
- Judgement call.
- Technically, this is the correct call, but this is a judgement call. I wouldn't argue against this either way. The problem is that you need to make the call when the foul happens. You can't tell where the ball is going to be thrown and if that were overthrown to where he could just get his fingers on it, everyone would be yelling about the missed holding call.
- Correct call.
- Missed call, like you said. While I want to say that this is a bad throw and shouldn't be PI as to not bail the offense out, that obviously isn't how it works.
- Same as 5.
- I'll take your word for it. When the rest of the receivers go deep, this is no man's land and is often going to be missed.
- Missed call. Umpire gets hit from behind as the block is happening. Should get called, but he's the one who needs to call it.
- Missed call. Needs to be called but no one wants to because it's not until you have replay to show how the offense gains an advantage out of this. Had the flag been thrown and the ball gone to another player, Indiana would be losing their mind about their guys just running routes. I do wish that this was a point of emphasis for more consistency.
- Correct call.
I think I disagreed with you on three of them. Two no calls, a good call, and a bad call turned into a good call and three judgement calls that I would credit as good calls whether he throws the flag or not. Based on that, I see 4 good calls, 4 missed calls.
October 19th, 2017 at 12:06 AM ^
Arrogance is not required to post.
October 18th, 2017 at 6:33 PM ^
I hope you do the groundings in the marginal-calls video because I am very interested to see.
October 18th, 2017 at 7:03 PM ^
October 18th, 2017 at 9:49 PM ^
Thanks, FanNamedOzzy! Great info! Appreciate the effort put into this and it confirms what we see, and more importantly, points out what we (and the officials) miss (or ignore). Coaches don't dare complain or it sounds like whining, but it absolutely can impact games when so many calls go against you in one way or the other. I'm sure it grinds them.
On the little Houdini play where their QB flipped the ball to his RB who picked up the first down (and where Hill was blocked in the back, I believe), I was livid because Bush was clearly held on his blitz (and tackled) by their left tackle . That play had no business standing w/o one or both calls being made.
And the play where McCray got the low hit...yeah, brutal to watch. The type of hit that too often ends the football dreams of the kids on the receiving end. Not sure how this play didn't draw the attention of some guy with a yellow flag in his pants.
October 19th, 2017 at 8:51 AM ^
"And the play where McCray got the low hit...yeah, brutal to watch. The type of hit that too often ends the football dreams of the kids on the receiving end. Not sure how this play didn't draw the attention of some guy with a yellow flag in his pants."
It didn't draw attention because it was perfectly legal.
You may think it shouldn't be - but by the rules, that is a legal block.
October 19th, 2017 at 8:59 AM ^
October 19th, 2017 at 7:52 AM ^
October 19th, 2017 at 11:00 AM ^
Good suggestion. Think that could be useful. Only concern with that is that it might be a bit hard to find the content for that. Including more snippets from the rule-book is definitely doable, but finding footage outside of the game would likely inflate the time it would take to churn these out.
Thanks for the suggestion, though! If there are games in the future that have less penalties, it would definitely be a handy way of explaining my opinion / verdict on each.
October 19th, 2017 at 9:54 AM ^
Ozzy...you're the main reason I finally took the plunge and signed up to be able to post on this blog. I absolutely love your film analysis. For someone like myself, who's never played football, your analysis has helped me understand how certain plays were missed, the breakdowns by the offensive line, quarterback issues, referee blnnders, etc, etc, etc.
I can't wait for your next film analysis...I could easily watch an hour every week, of all the key plays of that Saturday's game, to see what went right and what went wrong.
My only regret...I don't have enough points to upvote you. When I do, I'm quite certain you'll be the first one to get my upvote.
Well done!
October 19th, 2017 at 1:22 PM ^
October 19th, 2017 at 11:38 AM ^
October 19th, 2017 at 1:43 PM ^
Thanks! Probably in a couple hours.
October 19th, 2017 at 1:15 PM ^
don't see how anyone can call the PI on Fant questionable. I have no issue with a bit of grabbing but when the ball was in the air he boxed Mcdoom out with a straight stiffarm which is definatly impeding his route. Also you missed a couple obvious holds by IU and the blocks in the back on the punt return. I wil say the editing and presentation was great, would love to see more.
October 19th, 2017 at 1:43 PM ^
I'll be addressing that particular DPI call in the third video I release. It'll be interesting to see what people think of the Michigan interference calls today.
In regards to the holding, I only saw one main one against Gary that I would probably call questionable. The punt return is one that was absolutely missed, I just missed that one in editing. Will address that one as well.