Penalties played a bigger role in Buffalo’s game with Houston than the raw flag count would suggest.
At first glance, the Bills look like the messier team. Their penalty total sat well above average, while Houston landed closer to the league norm.
But that’s only part of the picture. When you get beyond the basic count and into what those flags actually took off the board, the gap narrows fast.
The assessment by yards told a different story as well. Both teams had a rough time with the officials when it came to penalties called on the field. Once the broader “true yards” picture is included - the yards directly assessed plus the yards erased by the flags - it ends up as a dead heat.
For Buffalo, the penalties carried real weight. The Bills finished with 13.2 harm for the game, and anything over 10.0 is generally the line between a good day and a bad one.
In other words, the laundry mattered. One of the most damaging moments, in the writer’s view, was the too many men on the field penalty that wiped out what should have been an easy conversion.
The harm metric does more than just tally the yards marked off. It also accounts for things like downs lost and points taken away.
That’s why Christian Benford’s defensive pass interference is worth more than the 21 yards attached to it. The flag cost 2.1 harm from the yardage alone, then added another 1.0 because it gave Houston a free down from second for a total of 3.1.
There was also a quirky case on Davison Igbinosun’s defensive holding. Houston had picked up seven yards on the play, but the penalty gave those yards back and still kept the down alive. That created a negative harm result, which the formula can produce in rare cases like that.
Houston’s penalty count looked cleaner, but the impact was still there. The Texans had two flags that checked in above 4.0 harm. Kamari Lassiter’s defensive pass interference in the end zone was an easy call from the standpoint of the metric: it was all assessed yards, and it moved the ball to the one-yard line, turning the play into a true field flipper.
David Montgomery’s chop block was even more layered. The penalty itself cost 15 yards, and it also erased a six-yard gain on 3rd & 5. That wiped out a first down and, in the harm system, counted as another 2.0 because it affected two downs.
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