Penalties and New QB Stats

The latest newsletter from KCSN Sports Data Scientist, Joseph Hefner.

This week's article is going to be another two-fer, like last week's. There’s been a cloud hanging over the Chiefs ever since our first game of the season vs. the Lions, when Cris Collinsworth made the point, repeatedly, that Jawaan Taylor was lined up too far back from the line of scrimmage on multiple snaps, and should have been flagged for Illegal Formation for it.

There have been plenty of articles written about this in the two weeks since that game. In weeks 2 and 3, after the first game when the spotlight was shined on Taylor, there have been three total Illegal Formation penalties against offensive linemen. All three of them have come against Jawaan Taylor. You can read this unlocked article from Seth Keysor on how this is being called inequitably, complete with demonstrations of multiple other tackles lined up at similar depths, without being flagged.

I want to come at this conversation from a different point of view, and hopefully add something new to it. I looked at Illegal Formations since 2019 (the year Jawaan Taylor came into the league) across the entire NFL, and found some rather startling numbers.