What Bears Penalty Totals Don't Say

Inside the Bears Numbers: Penalty totals are not quite as impressive as they seem, and can indicate a real problem with talent level.

One of the tenets of coach Matt Eberflus' HITS principle is smart play, and lack of penalties ranks high in this regard.

Bears GM Ryan Poles counted their penalty situation as a sign of accomplishment from this past season, one of the few real tangible numbers in their favor.

"I think we were one of the least penalized teams in the league," Poles said.

This is true but like former Beard defensive coordinator Greg Blache said, number lie. Well, at least in this case they simply don't tell the full story.

Yes the Bears definitely improved in penalties. They did finish with the third-fewest overall flags, discounting whether they're declined or accepted. They had 80 penalties, and this was 26 less than last year when they tied for 12th most.

However, teams don't match up with annual totals. It's a game-by-game, week-by-week league. This is a thought expressed by Eberflus and other Bears coaches over the years.

On a week-to-week basis in games, the Bears didn't fare quite so well.

In actual games, they had fewer penalities seven times, had more penalties seven times and the same number three times.

More penalty yards were walked off against the Bears in 13 of the 17 games.

Penalties work two ways and Bears opponents had the fewest penalty yards walked off in the NFL this season, 652 yards. The 84 penalties against Bears opponents was the second-lowest total in the league.

So while the Bears improved their ability to avoid penalties, so did their opponents.

There can only be two meanings to this.

One is that the teams the Bears faced all value smart play to an even greater extent than the Bears. This can't be measured and seems unlikely considering how much Bears coaches stressed this since they arrived at Halas Hall.

The other explanation is teams don't commit penalties against the Bears because they don't need to do it. One real way penalties occur is when players are overmatched. They can't cover a player, can't block someone or can't handle a blocker. They're overmatched and commit presnap penalties because of the pressure they're under.

The way this is solved is through better talent in free agency and the draft.

Coaches can set a foundation and preach limiting stupid mistakes until they are blue in the face but players with more talent don't need to commit penalties and won't if they are focused on this by coaches. Those lacking talent, will do it anyway as they try to find an edge in any way possible.

The Bears can declare their HITS principle a real success when they commit very few penalties, and have so much better talent that opponents are the ones forced to commit penalties against them.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven