The Scoop

Clifton Brown and Aron Pilhofer of the New York Times used data on penalties from the National Football League to show that “the number of penalties in the National Football League has increased each of the past four seasons, with the sharpest increase coming in offensive holding and false starts.” Officials threw an average of 17 flags a game in 2005, up from 13.6 penalties per game in 2001. The most penalized players were offensive linemen and defensive backs. The paper posted a version of the data on its website.