How the Titans were penalized in 2012

I'll have a post or two later this week on the all-22 from the season finale against the Jaguars, then we'll probably be starting our normal offseason positional analyses. Before that, though, I have a data dump-type post or two I want to run, and I'll start with the one today on penalties. Were the Titans a heavily-penalized team or one not hurt very much by penalties in 2012? It seems like it should be an obvious question to answer one way or the other, but it's kind of both. On the one hand, the Titans were flagged 135 times for penalties, and their 106 accepted penalties against ranked them in the top ten in the NFL in that category. They were clearly a far cry from the almost amazingly flag-resistant Falcons, who had a mere 55 penalties accepted against them last year. Then again, the Falcons were an extreme outlier, ranking first by an amazing 17 penalties. Despite their nominal ranking of tenth, the Titans were nearly as close to the Vikings, who had the f...