[Blogs] “No Reason” For Penalties

[BR News]

One week after they were penalized a season-low two times, the Ravens earned nine flags last Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Sure, it was nice to still come away with a 20-17 overtime victory, but the margin for error gets slimmer by the day as the playoffs near.

Baltimore is currently the fourth-most penalized team in the NFL, with their 78 accepted infractions falling behind the Green Bay Packers (87), Dallas Cowboys (83) and Philadelphia Eagles (82).

And they are costing the Ravens to the tune of 773 surrendered yards.

Head coach John Harbaugh said he was especially disappointed with the way his team earned silly flags on punt returns.

Safety Tom Zbikowski was cited 15 yards for unnecessary roughness on a first-quarter return that essentially negated a 17-yard punt returns.  In the fourth quarter, wideout Daivd Tyree didn’t help when he got a 10-yard illegal blindside block called against him on a kickoff, and later, linebacker Tavares Gooden’s illegal block erased Chris Carr’s 43-yard punt return.

“Very disappointed, just special teams-wise, with the penalties,” Harbaugh said.  “There’s really no reason.  We work on it every single day.  There’s no reason to put your hand on the guy’s back.  It’s hard to do, now, because you’re trying to get a block and you’re reaching for a guy.  But we have to be better than that. 

“It’s not just the 10 yards you lose; it’s the yards that you gain on the return that you lose.  Those can be huge penalties, and at the end of the game that was probably a 50-yard penalty.  That’s an area that we as a staff work really hard on and the players work really hard on, and we’ve just got to be better in that area.”

[url=http://blogs.baltimoreravens.com/?p=2250]View the full article[/url]

[ravenwildman]

Penalties are a big problem this year, too much talent on the team for this. Sometimes its simply a bad "judgment call" by the referee. That's unfortunate when that happens, but stupid penalties are just....umm stupid.

Put it this way. Players like Chris Carr risk serious injury by putting forth a tremendous player's effort to help the team win, only to have it negated by an unnecessary stupid penalty. Wow, think guys.

Time to make them cheese heads green in the face after the Ravens come to town. Bring the Fire baby!

GO RAVENS!

[DaveGarris]

Penalties, penalties and more penalties. It seems like at least every other play this year there is a flag on Baltimore. Sometimes they are warranted, other times completely bogus but you can't blame the officials all the time. Either way, the Ravens coaching staff and veteran players need to come together and try to instill some more discipline in this team. If we don't amp up our game and stop giving away yards we won't make it to the playoffs. That simple.

[billr274]

baltimore does get bad refs but the special teams was at fault vs Pittsburgh. Some of the holding penalties could have been stopped by just blocking. Also he pass interference calls were horrible

[jhonnyboy]

R.I.P. green bay

[cfkfravenstx]

Totally agree with the fact that sometimes the penalties that are called against us are a little close but the reason we get refs on us is because we are very aggressive now we have to somehow get a balance between being physical and being smart about the way we play I know one thing those Cheeseheads better b ready because I know we will GO RAVENS!!!

[JD-A Raven]

Yup I agree that we got many wrong calls against us but according to me there is a reason behind that. And the reason is the latest technology which the other teams are using to understand the Our play style. Other teams are smart enough to take advantage of our aggresive play. Other teams know that the Ravens are tough to tackle, so other teams take advantage by pretending the penalty style that refs thought about flags. But refs are also humans and they are not the enemies of Ravens. So avoid the penalties and play more aggresively that penalty could not come between Ravens and Superbowl

[Fred Sanford]

Ticky-tack nonsense by steroid addled Ed Hochuli! Sheer gabbledegook! I knew as soon as I saw that bozo that we'd get a poorly officiated game. That guy wants to be the center of attention, and doesn't realize he's a wrinkly muscled up old joke. We can't catch a break with these jibronies.

[coreyadams]

We are beatin ourselves with penalties. Play smart now guys! Play smart. Yardage forward is better than yardage backwards...

[maxim]

I am dumbfounded as to the number of overzealous kick and punt return penalties. Isn't Harbaugh a lifetime not sometime special teams coach!!!!

[FerrariFan87]

I thought this was Harbaugh's forte? I guess not... Something's gotta change.