The question is who has control to address the penalties? OLC? OC? HC? Did this GM not deny the HC increasing fines because players were tardy to meetings or not showing up at all?
Williams got benched because of penalties and they had to put him back in the lineup because McGovern was not ss good.
The offense led the league in penalties, yards and points. Sounds like the Raiders of old when they were winning rings. Because they could overcome those penalties and theirs were usually of the contact variety.
You can blame the coaches but the fact is this team is not good enough to overcome their own self-inflicted wounds. When they were cresting, they were the best 1st down and 3rd down offense in the league and the penalties were not as apparent. But the latter half, that changed. They had to play behind the chains too much.
So, you are the coach, what do you do? The OL is not giving the QB time and worse, the receivers time to get past the marker. So do you take the better player at LG out and provide even less protection?
And did you notice the effect of benching Williams on the other mistake makers? No, you didn't.
There just isn't any depth in the OL's in the NFL so if you have a player like Williams, who has never improved since they wasted a draft pick on him, you either live with that or change it. The fault is hanging onto this player because of the GM's ego not wanting to let picks on the first two days fail. They knew exactly what they had heading into this season, a problem at LG and it bit them in the butt too many times.
The last person I blame is Williams. Have you watched him closely? He's getting mauled at times because every DC knows he is the weakest link in the chain. To a lesser degree, he is Chaz Green, overmatched and overcompensating with trying to get in position faster than the DL. He has absolutely been pancaked by DL.
This franchise is only good picking OL in the 1st round. That is the bigger problem.