Also, overall penalties is not going to give you a good indicator of whether there is a trend or not. Last year, Arizona led the league in penalties called by a large margin. In 2019, it was Tampa Bay by a large margin. 2018 it was KC and we weren’t even close to the top. 2017 we were close to bottom of the league and 2016, we were middle of the pack while Oakland was top by far.
It is only this year where we are leading the league and we are onlg two penalties above LV..
The better stats would be to look at a by-game basis to see the impact. Dallas could just be involved in games where the penalty counts are high this year, meaning the officiating crews they are playing with have a tendency to call more penalties.
no doubt there have been questionable calls by refs. The Patriots-Jaguars playoff game, the Steelers-Seattle SB. The Harrison INT against Warner, where Warner was clearly pushed in the back not allowing him to force Harrison to be caught on the half ending TO for a TD in the SB. The Dez catch and so on..