Occasionally, football coaches will talk about something called “Hidden Yards Lost.” These are the plays that did meaningfully affect the football game, but you won’t find them reflected anywhere because another event on the field made it so that play never existed.

In short, these are the big plays that get erased by a penalty.

I went through all 17 games from the Seattle Seahawks this season and tracked the yards that were lost because of penalties.

Below are the results. If you’d like to know the greatest offender, I can tell you it is…
at the conclusion of this post.

Here are the rules and initial guidelines:

Rules and Guidelines for Invisible Yards Lost

1. This seeks to measure the difference between what a play would have gained, against where the ball ultimately ended up because of lost yards due to penalty. For example, a 10 yard gain negated by an offensive holding penalty would be a total of 20 “Hidden Yards Lost”
2. A false start, a defensive hold, an offsides, and other infractions that either kill the play or simply result in X yards plus new set of downs are not the objective in Hidden Yards Lost
3. This will overwhelmingly appear to be the fault of the offense. Reason being, a defensive penalty adds yards in the same direction as the ball is headed, while offensive (and certain special teams) penalties are what move the ball against where it was originally headed.
4. Of those, the primary offender are perimeter holding calls. Again, makes sense, as those are often isolated engagements in full view of an official.
5. There were some surprises.

At this point in the season, it appears as if Anthony Bradford might be the worst player in football. I remain shocked that he was given so much time to sow chaos among his brethren linemen before finally a fresh face entered the mix.

Leonard Williams makes an appearance as the first defensive player to join the fray. That play was so bonkers the entire Seattle beat had to look it up and write about it all evening. Even though there was a false start, the play bizarrely continued just long enough for Big Cat to facemask a dude. As we learned – twice(!) this season, a personal fall supersedes a lesser penalty. Therefore, instead of five yards backwards it was 15 yards forward for the San Francisco 49ers.

Kenneth Walker…woof.

Derick Hall was having so much fun.

Two roughing the passer penalties destroyed negative plays on the offense, while Devon Witherspoon cancelled out a big sack, and Jerrick Reed threw his hat in for the big special teams field position cancellation.

Not to be outdone, Mike Jerrell lost an entire football field in two plays.

Week 10 had nothing, followed by the bye week.
We resume:

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Week 18 had nothing to report

Results

Here are the biggest yard-subtractors, in order:

• Mike Jerrell: 98
• DK Metcalf: 72 and a TD
• AJ Barner: 64 and a TD
• Pharaoh Brown: 58
• Kenneth Walker: a 57-yard TD

Notes –

• Leonard Williams will get the nod for most defensive yards lost at 49, which surprised me because of how well he played this season. It was the result of three very unfortunately-timed plays.
• Anthony Bradford: at just 40 yards and a safety didn’t even finish the season in the top five. There were even a couple other players in the fifties.
• I’m not going to conclude the same thing about DK Metcalf that I some people will. For starters, the offensive pass interference calls are for him blocking while another receiver got the ball. I have long been a proponent that Metcalf receives a disproportionate amount of physical calls against him because of his size and aura, especially weighed against the physical calls that are not called in his favor. The dude is big and easy to see. I will admit the volume of those is alarming, and if somebody insists on continuing to try screen plays in the future, they’ve got to figure out how to help Metcalf out here.

ONE FINAL NUMBER

In total, the Seahawks lost 802 yards and three touchdowns in the 2024 season that will never show up on the stat sheet. Erased from time, almost like the picture of Marty McFly’s family in Back to the Future.