Flagz from Tom Rock

[Lughead]

Flag daze

 

I was chatting with Barry Cofield yesterday about what the defense focused on during the bye. He said one of the things the staff pointed out was the correlation between penalties and scoring drives. Barry didn't remember the exact numbers, he said, but it was pretty glaring.

 

I put those numbers together and yes, they are glaring.

 

The Giants have allowed nine scoring drives so far this season. Six of them were helped out by a Giants penalty on defense. Three of those penalties were early in the drive and may or may not have had a direct influence on what happened. But three others were fairly significant: The facemask call against Jay Alford that set up Washington's only TD at the end of the first half, the facemask against Justin Tuck as he made a third-down sack against the Rams, and the pass interference call against Kevin Dockery on third down against the Rams.

 

If you take away the drives in which the Giants committed a penalty, they've allowed only one touchdown and two field goals this season. And that one touchdown was the ghastly 25-yard run by Perry in the second quarter of the Bengals game.

 

Just for comparison's sake, the Giants have 20 penalties for 179 yards in three games (that's on offense and defense). That's 6.67 penalties per game and 59.67 yards per game. Last year they averaged 4.8 penalties and gave up 40.75 yards per game.