the answer is not very much. like unrecognizably so.
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“We arrived at X so it’s the same” is not how it works. That sack did happen so that ensuing penalty did help. It was not a 0 yard run because the game isn’t played in a vacuum.
There are either 5 pillars or there is 1. If there’s 5, penalties contribute to 3 of them. If there’s 1, then penalties don’t matter.
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if we had rushed 3 more times for 5 yards each in the game, how impactful would those plays be to the outcome?
a penalty doesn't matter any more than any discrete play that goes for 15 yards or less (or a 15 yard loss or less).
let's say you take a sack on first down and it's 2nd and 15. then the other team jumps offsides. it's the same thing as rushing for 0 yards on first down. what happens after that penalty is what matters. you could throw a 55 yard bomb for a touchdown on 2nd and 10. it doesn't matter how you got to 2nd and 10. the next play is not dependent on the previous one.
after the game we'd probably say "man that penalty really helped us out," but it didn't help you anymore than if you'd just rushed for 0 yards on first down prior to throwing the bomb.
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important.
If you look at the game as a whole, penalties matter. Particularly RZ ones.
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factors to something that is not. the 5 factors *really* matter. when we did not punch it on that drive vs Nebraska to start the game... not finishing that drive *really* mattered.
the EPA of that failed rush was -4.14. the penalty discrepancy in the game was only .24 in our favor. All the penalties added up to a .24 point advantage while the failure to punch it in from the 1 led to a 4.14 point disadvantage for Illinois. THAT IS STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT! that's why penalties don't matter.
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EPA is just measuring how much the ball moves back and forth. whether the ball moved by penalty or a completion, it doesn't matter.
that play regardless of how it was achieved, was worth 1.13 EPA. there are not enough penalties in a game for them to matter to the outcome like the other 5 factors do. that's why missing a FG is worth a lot more EPA than a penalty.
turnover luck was -6.4 for Illinois. had Rosiek recovered that one fumble down deep in Maryland territory it would have had a huge impact on the outcome. way more than the penalties. that's why turnovers are one of the five factors, but not penalties.
like yes, penalties may affect your success rate, but they are baked in. assume no penalties happen and instead it's either a sack or a first down rush, or whatever you want. it's the same equivalent in terms of EPA. the turnover discrepancy was only 15 yards in this game. if we had 15 more yards rushing, and there were no penalties called at all, does that effect the outcome very much? No.
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“The penalty didn’t matter nearly as much as missing the FG”
Come on. Of course the actual missed field goal play was “worse” in EPA. But if they had made it, and a penalty helped them get there, it mattered.
I’m sure the EPA of a TD pass is more than a DPI on 3rd down that gets a team to the 3 yard line. That doesn’t make the penalty immaterial.
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the EPA of the Tyler Strain penalty put MD in the scoring area. But they didn't finish the drive and the EPA shift from missing the FG was significantly bigger than the penalty.
the penalty didn't matter nearly as much as missing the FG.
what penalties do is they move the ball back and forth, just like any other play. from the spot on the field where the ball moves, there is an EPA associated with that. the EPA on penalty discrepancies rarely, and i mean rarely as in there is zero correlation between penalty yards and wins, effects the outcome of a game.
now, if you are telling me that one team is great at scoring TDs in the RZ and another team isn't, i will tell you that has a huge impact on the outcome of the game.
penalties don't matter guys. i'm telling you, they don't effect EPA enough to matter. it's just one play that is rarely an explosive.
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You’re really reaching.
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MD gives us a face mask penalty around midfield, the EPA for that was only .78. the next play was a Feagin rush for 8 yards. EPA was very close to that at .66. just a comparison of how a 15 yard gain at midfield compares to an 8 yard gain from the opponents 35ish.
Later in the game Strain commits a PI penalty, EPA is 1.13. MD goes on to miss a FG, EPA from the miss was -3.27.
the EPA of that penalty trade off was only .35 points. The EPA of missing the kick (i.e. not scoring the ball with a scoring opportunity inside your opponents 40) was almost 10x that difference in the penalty EPA. Finishing drives >>>> penalties. so much so that penalties just don't effect the game enough to matter.
There is no macro stat anywhere that accounts for losing an 80-yard TD because a guy lined up wrong. I'm not aware of any stats kept for explosives lost due to penalty (if there is one, I'd love to see it), but if explosives are indeed one of the 5 factors (and rightfully so), *lost explosives* are also a factor because they are difficult to replicate.
I'm not aware of any stat that accounts for losing a turnover (another of the 5 factors) because a guy lines up a whisker offsides... or a stripsack that is overturned because the DE inadvertently pulls on the QB's facemask.
Penalties absolutely matter, but they are incredibly difficult to differentiate with data because there is no way to quantify what was lost due to penalty. Nobody keeps those stats. In the long run, penalties and yardage even out, agreed . In the long run, turnover luck tends to even out too.
But in-game, it matters... just like a TO or an explosive if the penalty is substantive in nature.