The blown-penalty data can affect careers and player safety, so it must at least be available to teams and the NFLPA. But why is the bad-penalty data our business, except for the fact that we are the customers and we would love a gander at it?
The reason comes down to the NFL's two least-favorite concepts: transparency and accountability.
The bad-penalty data might confirm some widely held suspicions: The Broncos get away with extra goonery, the Seahawks extra contact, the Cowboys line lots of uncalled holding, while opponents in Foxborough endure unwarranted flags for sneezing. Or maybe the data debunks some or all of those theories. Heck, local fanbases will probably pick and choose what they want to believe, anyway.
Either way, the data is out there. But we don't know what the NFL calls correctly and incorrectly, by its own estimation, as well as what situations lead to officiating errors and which players and teams felt the greatest impact.
That transparency leads to accountability. Instead of falling back on "the refs blew it," coaches, players, fans and media can point to, say, a 10 percent error rate on holding, or a 20 percent increase in uncalled roughing against a scrambling quarterback, or real home/road or late-and-close biases toward incorrect calls. The more we know what to look for, the easier it is to make the kind of corrections that can make the games both safer and better played.