Bear Digest

Should Bears and Ben Johnson worry about the 'zebras' for playoffs?

The referee for Saturday night headed a crew notorious in the NFL for penalty flags but the Bears' coach has good reasons for not being concerned about the situation.
Gene Chamberlain|
The Bears were one of the most penalized teams and benefited the least in penalty yards during this season.
The Bears were one of the most penalized teams and benefited the least in penalty yards during this season. | Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

Officiating invariably gets scrutinized to death in the NFL playoffs, even more than during the regular season.

Calls made are life and death to teams' seasons, so it's going to be this way.

It was pointed out to Ben Johnson on Thursday that Saturday night's playoff game will be officiated by a crew responsible for a lot of flags, referee Adrian Hill's crew. They were second in flags thrown.

While the stat might be right, the comment wasn't. And Johnson immediately shot down pregame concern over this topic.

“Who on this crew has thrown all those flags?" Johnson demanded of the questioner. "This is an all-star crew of a collection of guys, so are we saying this collection, this particular collection has been second-most?”

Johnson is right. Full crews do not go into the playoffs. Hill is the head referee but he doesn't have his crew and they were involved in calling all the penalties.

It's an all-star crew. Officials are assigned postseason games based on individual merit from regular-season evaluation, rather be assigned games based on crew scores. Lower-graded officials do not receive postseason assignments. The crew members are most often taken from various regular-season crews.

“So he’s not the one actually doing it, so that’s not a concern of mine," Johnson said. "We’re well-versed on all the officials that will be participating in this game."

Hill's crew did work two Bears games this season. The first was their 25-24 win over the Raiders on a blocked field goal. The Bears drew eight flags for 60 yards while the Raiders had five for 36 yards.

Later, Hill's crew did the Bears-Giants game and the Bears were penalized only three times for 25 yards while the Giants had 10 penalties for 69 yards.

What Johnson does know, and he addressed it with the team, is they can't afford the unnecessary roughness penalties they had in the last game with Green Bay. The officials weren't the ones making controversial calls there. Both penalties, as well as one on Jaquan Brisker for hitting a sliding Malik Willis were all very apparent.

"We’ve got to play a cleaner variety of football in regards to those 15-yard penalties that we had last time,” Johnson said.

Austin Booker received two for roughing Jordan Love and the second was when he got penalized for the hit that led to a fine after Love’s concussion.

The Packers have been making a good deal of noise about that topic this week.

The Bears led the NFL in roughing-the-passer penalties with nine, so it wasn't like they singled out Love.

When all was said and done, the Bears' penalty totals had dropped following their terrible start to the season.

They wound up with the sixth most penalties (120) and eighth most penalty yards (970). On the other side, they received the benefit of the fifth fewest penalties for the fewest number of yards (678).

The Bears' penalty flag guy of the year?

Tackle Darnell Wright drew 12 penalties for 95 yards, with eight of his penalties involved in stalled drives, according to NFLgsis.com. Wright had a strong season, though, and was chosen Pro Football Focus second-team All-Pro.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.