Following the Eagles' Week 3 loss against the Giants, Michael Vick went on a bit of a rant about the state of officiating in the NFL as it pertained to him. The rare "I'm not complaining, but I am complaining," statement. Former NFL Director of Officiating Mike Pereira went on a barnstorming tour to show his support for the officials and to counteract Vick's claims, ending with a piece on FoxSports.com that measured each players' Roughing the Passer penalties against his pass attempts.

Now, if you're a long-time Football Outsiders reader, that sentence probably inspired the same red flag that came to my mind: pass attempts are a poor denominator. Not only would it shift things in favor of players who didn't throw often, it would also make certain superstar quarterbacks with a proclivity for throwing the ball often show up lower on the chart.

I decided to run the numbers and compare the Roughing the Passer penalties to our quarterback knockdown numbers (i.e. QB hits plus sacks). This contains data from 2009 through Week 3 of this season. Plays cancelled by penalty are included (after all, a sack with a Roughing the Passer penalty doesn't count in the PBP, but it sure counts to the quarterback).

Here's your big caveat: Roughing the Passer penalties are fairly rare. There are only about three or four of them, total, called in any given week. Don't make sweeping conclusions based on this data. (And a small caveat: Not every Roughing the Passer penalty is called on a quarterback knockdown. A knockdown technically means the quarterback hit the ground or was sacked, but some Roughing the Passer penalties are called simply for helmet contact.)

With those limitations in mind, here are my observations:

Vick actually draws flags at about a league-average rate overall. He's drawn four flags since he started seeing regular quarterback time again in 2010, one this season. Per our data, he was knocked down 21 times in the first three weeks of this season. Sam Bradford, who was knocked down 30 times, lead the league. The 32 quarterbacks I selected for this sample (players who were knocked down 70 or more times over the 2009-2010 seasons) averaged a Roughing the Passer flag every 31 knockdowns. So while Vick only has one Roughing the Passer penalty so far this year, it's not like he's getting hosed. That puts him ahead of schedule. (Though other quarterbacks are certainly further ahead of him, of course.)

On the other hand, there may be a bit of a precedent to whine publicly about unfair officiating. After Tom Brady drew two Roughing the Passer flags against Baltimore in 2009, the Ravens hemmed and hawed about it. After that, Brady and Peyton Manning, the two pre-eminent quarterbacks in the NFL this past decade, both drew just one flag for it in 2010. Granted, Brady's knockdowns went down about 30 percent in 2010, but he drew five in 2009 (Manning drew three). Brady hasn't drawn one yet in 2011 either, though Ryan Fitzpatrick drew two in their Week 3 game in Buffalo. Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, and Philip Rivers have stayed roughly constant.

In that spirit, it may be time for Tony Romo, Matt Schaub, Joe Flacco, and Josh Freeman to start complaining (or having someone else do it for them). The four of them are all huge outliers -- combining for just five total flags in 620 quarterback knockdowns. Romo did finally draw one in Week 4 that I haven't counted down here -- all it took was Ndamukong Suh nearly destroying him. For that matter, David Garrard drew zero flags in 210 knockdowns, but I'd imagine he's more worried about finding employment than lobbying for favorable calls at this point.

Here's what the raw data looks like: