There have been articles published, statements by Pete Carroll, and numerous tweets sent out about the penalty disparity that has plagued the Seahawks this season. The article on Field Gulls intimated that the penalty discrepancy was so large, and so statistically aberrant, that it must be the referees’ faults.

Below is the view that was being brought up. It’s pretty clear that the Seahawks are an outlier by a pretty large margin, with Denver (the most penalized team) and New England following closely behind. Seahawks opponents appear to be penalized the fewest times in the entire league, and it's not even close.

And below is a view of the actual disparity. Seattle leads the league, with 40+ more penalties called on the Seahawks than their opponents.

However, the article lacked an appropriate perspective on the nature of the penalties, which I believe to be an important consideration when looking at penalty disparities.

The belief is that the Seahawks are being penalized at an unfairly high rate, due to the recent emphasis on defensive holding, and whatever the other conspiracy theories are out there about how the NFL doesn’t want a dynasty in Seattle or whatever. In order to gauge if this could be the case, however, I believe that pre-snap penalties and post-snap penalties need to be looked at separately. Pre-snap penalties, like off-sides, false starts, and 12-men on the field, are not subject to subjectivity. It’s very clear to fans, players, and referees when one of these have occurred, and when it is appropriate to call a penalty before the snap. Post-snap penalties, however, rely very much so on referee positioning and judgment. It is much easier to determine if a false start occurred, than to determine if a defensive holding call occurred. That’s why Mike Peireira and Mike Carey have comfy desk jobs now, after all.

By dividing the overall penalties into pre-snap and post-snap penalties, I wanted to be able to look at how much of the penalty disparity was due to calls that were subject to referee judgment, and how much of it was due to calls that were less subjective. I categorized 12 Men on the Field, Offside, False Start, Encroachment, Delay of Game, and Taunting penalties as pre-snap penalties, while everything else was considered post-snap penalties.

I’ll save the kicker for last. Here’s the view of how Seattle’s post-snap penalties compare with the rest of league. If there were a referee bias, or an inordinate amount of "touchy" calls being called against the Seahawks, we would expect to see a larger disparity in post-snap penalties on the Seahawks than on the rest of the league.

This is not the case. Seattle has the 7th largest disparity in post-snap penalties. Denver and New England both have the most, with 29 and 26, respectively, more post-snap penalties called on them than their opponents. That figure for Seattle is 12.

Here’s the pre-snap view. Remember, we agreed that these are less subjective penalties than post-snap penalties.

Welp. Seattle has had 29 more pre-snap penalties called on them than on their opponents. The next highest is the New York Jets, with 11. Therefore, it turns out that the original ridiculous disparity in the overall penalty count appears to be largely our own fault.

This disparity by penalty is detailed in the chart below, along with the league average of those penalties over all 32 teams. The highlighted columns represent the penalties that cause the majority of the pre-snap penalty disparity. In other words, 21 out of the 29 additional pre-snap penalties called on the Seahawks are due to False Start, Defensive Off-side, and Neutral Zone Infraction penalties.

On post-snap penalties the Seahawks’ penalty figures are not substantially different from the average observed across the league.

This implies that the penalty disparity between the Seahawks and their opponents is due to a lot of mental and communication errors. A lot of this has to do with the aggressiveness of our defensive front, and injuries to our offensive line. The low number of False Start penalties called against Seahawks opponents also appears to be due to opposing teams playing more conservatively and carefully when playing the Seahawks.

The initial perception that the Seahawks were being unfairly targeted on Defensive Holding, Defensive Pass Interference, Illegal Contact, and Illegal Use of Hands appears to be unwarranted. On those specific penalties, the Seahawks have only been penalized three more times than their opponents, and almost two fewer times than league average. The challenge facing the Seahawks appears to be internal, and well within the Seahawks’ control.

The silver lining on this is that with Unger and B-Wags back, we should see these pre-snap penalties drop off dramatically, and we've been winning in spite of these dumb penalties. Just in time for a push for home-field.

Data is from Football Outsiders' play-by-play data