​The Buffalo Bills were heavily favored to beat the Los Angeles Chargers and while they did win, it was a much bigger ordeal than anyone thought it would be. The five turnovers were a pretty big deal, but the chatter on penalties has been nearly as loud this week. That’s 100% valid too with the Bills putting up near-record numbers when it comes to my proprietary penalty rating stat. Note: As a heads up for this week, I dedicated my film and media creation time to a second penalty article on the controversial roughing the passer calls this weekend. Keep an eye out for that. Standard and Advanced MetricsPenalty CountsRight off the bat this is bad. Not near-historic as the headline suggests, but still very bad. From this perspective, the Chargers didn’t have a great game either, landing firmly on average. Though again, average was a darn sight better than where the Bills were. Penalty YardsThe assessed yards plays out about as you’d expect based on count, but it’s always the true yards where things start getting interesting in my opinion. Buffalo made it very interesting impacting/negating 47 yards beyond the assessed. Buffalo negated almost as many yards as the Chargers had assessed. Penalty HarmLos Angeles ChargersWhen it’s all said and done though, per my Harm metric the Chargers had an alright day with 7.6 Harm total, decently below our “bad day” line of 10.0 Harm. In fact the largest spike is the 2 for Cole Strange’s count of false start flags. Every year I debate the utility of having the count of the penalty in the graph per player, and every year at least one person shows me why we need it. There’s really very little interesting to see here with Joe Alt’s offensive holding negating a nine-yard scramble by Justin Herbert being the most captivating tale by itself. If you’re into formulas and are new to this metric or forgot how it works, all yards are counted as 0.1 Harm. For Alt that’s 10 yards for the assessed and nine yards negated for 19 yards total or 1.9 Harm. The biggest impediment to their success was perhaps two false starts called with only a single play between them in the third quarter. The first one occurred on 2nd & goal at the one-yard line. Now 2nd & 6, Los Angeles tried a pass which was incomplete. And then another false start to force 3rd & 11. Rather than two or perhaps three goal line runs which likely yield a touchdown, the Chargers settled for a field goal. Buffalo BillsDawson Knox’s offensive holding singlehandedly had higher Harm than the Chargers’ entire output for the day. Whereas yards are counted as 0.1 Harm, downs and points are all counted as 1.0 Harm for each one. In Knox’s case, his flag called back a Ray Davis touchdown or 7.0 points/Harm alone. The flag itself was 10 yards and also negated 14 yards of Davis’ 43 yard run. Potentially the most exciting play of the game tarnished. On the plus side, the play was on fourth down and the holding occurred after the first was