What The UTEP Study Gets Right And Wrong Regarding The NFL Favoring The Kansas City Chiefs In The Playoffs
Jamie Squire. Getty Images.I haven't had time getting to this UTEP / NFL Rigged story seeing as how I unfortunately have a completely different real job outside of the hobby blog life, but that doesn't mean I'm late. In fact. I was early. By nine months when I pretty much blogged the same thing:
Now I didn't actually read the full research article, because it's behind a paywall and against my religion to pay for something my tax dollars already paid to have done (just an absolute scam of a system). But I have the abstract at least and that's where you put the big hitting claims of a study, and I have every penalty ever committed in the NFL in my own database anyway.
"Analyzing 13,136 defensive penalties from 2015 to 2023, we find that postseason officiating disproportionately favors the Mahomes-era Kansas City Chiefs"
There it is. The big claim. But it's wildly misleading. I ran a few quick lookups myself and actually show 14,195 defensive penalties from this time frame. Without looking any further, I'm guessing the extra are lines in which the penalty was declined or whatever else. But that includes the regular season, which I'm guessing you'll be surprised to learn based on their phrasing. You see - only 525 defensive penalties from 2015-2023 occurred in the Playoffs, and just 71 of which were in games in which the Chiefs were on offense.
So, yeah. That's bad. UTEP is hiding the fact that there's a lousy sample size. And of course there is! There's not that many Playoff games or even penalties in such games to work off of. I did also read a Reddit thread where apparently the author of the study is a huge Steelers fan, which is kind of awesome to think about. If that's the case, credit to him for using his professional standing to slight a rival conference after the Chiefs squashed the Steelers in the 2021 Playoffs. Dudes rock decision by that guy.
But even though sample size is small, that doesn't mean shit doesn't stink in KC.
Quick TL;DR for my blog above on all this. I looked just at 2021-2024 which isolates to Mahomes' playing years (even his rookie year in which he didn't play in the Playoffs although I could probably have just removed that). If you just consider subjective penalties, the Chiefs had the largest difference vs their Playoff opponents.
Again - small sample. But it stinks. And matches what anyone not associated with the Chiefs sees on the field. It get's even more weird when you consider the time of the game in which subjective penalties occur. The list below goes from end of the game penalties at the top to beginning of game at the bottom (Q5 = Overtime) and any row in red is a subjective penalty on the Chiefs. Notice how few there are in the 4th quarter or overtime. Also to start the game.
By the way - that blog I wrote came out right before the AFC Championship game. A game that was riddled with the sketchiest rulings you could ever see. Rulings that don't fall into the purview of penalties thus remains impossible to perform and data analytic investigation. And that's an important point. It's not just subjective penalties. It's subjective rulings. Which there are a lot more of by the way. But we all know what we saw when they ruled Josh Allen not making that first down.
What's really funny though is the idea that the NFL needed to boost it's Super Bowl ratings. The thing that costs eleventy-billion dollars to get 30 seconds of ad space for. Which is essentially what the UTEP study is trying to say. That's probably a reach, but if so, it kind of tracks. Think about it. There was no other game to have the Chiefs advance to after the Super Bowl last season, so what happens when a team get's their bumper bowling lanes taken away from them? They get demolished by the Eagles.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. Is Dante right and Jayden Daniels is going to be the next hype guy or do they keep it rolling with Mahomes? They sure tried hard to have Daniels win Monday Night. That's for damn sure.