Do coaches cause/prevent penalties?

Some actually do consistently have low amounts of penalties.  It should be no surprsie to find Dungy and Herm at the top of that list.  Dungy preaches ‘no penalties’ and Herm is very much from the Dungy school.

Using regression analysis, I tested all head coaches who ran a team in at least four different seasons between 2000 and 2009. Thirteen different coaches affected penalties in a way that a simple regression identifies as “statistically significant” (p-value < 0.05). Here they are along with how many penalties their teams had each year compared to their “expected total”: What’s interesting about the list of coaches whose teams had fewer penalties than expected is that most of them are considered “players’ coaches” rather than tough-as-nails, discipline-instilling dictators. Only three coaches come out with significantly “less disciplined” teams, so I don’t think we can learn anything about whether a certain kind of coaching style leads to teams that commit more penalties.