NFL insider notebook: Less flags equals more points, James Robinson's jersey gesture, plus Week 1 picks

Jonathan Jones kicks off the 2021 season with his weekly look inside the NFL

Week 1 is upon us and it's never looked better. I'm back with my weekly insider notebook this season here at CBSSports.com, and we're going to use this space just like last year to highlight trend stories, empty out the notebook from trips around the league and make picks on all 272 games this season. But before the picks (and I got 67.8% of them correct last season), I'll begin with a couple of officiating notes to set you up for what's to come this week and beyond. The NFL experienced an offensive explosion last season thanks to revolutionary offensive schemes and quarterbacks who are more accurate than ever. But officiating -- and more specifically, lax officiating on offensive penalties -- also had something to do with it. I'm told the league's de-emphasis on offensive holding penalties will continue into the 2021 season. Offensive holding flags went from 724 in 2019 to 462 in 2020. Put another way, teams averaged 2.74 offensive holding flags in games between 2015-2019 but just 1.8 flags in 2020. This offseason, the NFL competition committee looked at 100 potential offensive holding penalties that went uncalled in 2020. Ninety of those no-calls stood upon review, whereas the league would have liked to see penalties on the other 10 due to their proximity to the point of attack/game action. With that, it stands to reason there may be a slight uptick in offensive holding this season, but only marginally.