The Buffalo Bills faced off against the New York Jets on Monday Night Football in Week 6, and Buffalo came away with a 23-20 road victory.
But when you look at two dial-in defenses in the Bills’ Josh Allen and the Jets’ Aaron Rodgers and the back-and-forth battle between two of the top quarterbacks in the game, you’ll notice that the penalties cost a lot of the game. There was a complete lack of flow and it was filthy. Every time the game seemed to be heating up, play was stopped due to a violation. If you thought the number of penalties was insane, you were right.
Both teams were given 11 penalties and had 22 total violations, tied for the most in a single game this season. The Bills (94 penalty yards) and Jets (110 penalty yards) have combined for 204 penalty yards, leading the way through six weeks of the 2024 season in a single game.
Obviously some of the penalties, such as pass interference and bad holding, should have been called. There were also some questionable ones, including an unnecessary roughness call on Bills edge rusher AJ Epenesa when he sacked Rodgers with 9:38 left in the third quarter. Officials cited “unnecessary second action” in making this particular call, even though it’s unclear what unnecessary second action is. Even Rodgers disagreed with the penalty against Epenesa.
“It seemed a little ridiculous,” Rodgers said after the game. “Some of them looked really bad, including some passer roughness on me. It’s not passer roughness. If you’re going to call it that, you might as well play Salkastaball. .And I thought the one against (Javon) Kinlaw wasn’t roughing, either.” ”
Let’s hope the NFL, its teams and officials can clean up the on-field artifacts as the 2024 season progresses.